SpaceX’s mighty Falcon Heavy rocket now has five flights.
A Falcon Heavy launched at 5:56 a.m. EST (2256 GMT) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida on Sunday (Jan. 15), kicking off a classified mission for the US Space Force called USSF-67 Is.
“Lifting off USSF-67. Go Falcon Heavy! Go Space Force!” a mission team member said on SpaceX’s communications line during the launch, which the company webcast live.
Connected: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy launches US military satellites in first flight in 3 years
The Falcon Heavy consists of three modified first stages of SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. All three are bundled together, the central one sporting a payload-carrying upper stage.
Falcon Heavy first-stage boosters are designed to be reusable, like the Falcon 9, and two of them successfully returned to Earth on Sunday: USSF-67’s side boosters touched down safely at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Gone, which is next door to KSC, eight minutes after launch. It was the second landing for each of them; Both participated in USSF-44, a Falcon Heavy mission for the Space Force, which is slated to launch on November 1, 2022.
The central booster on USSF-67 was a new vehicle, and would not get a chance to fly again. It splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean shortly after takeoff on Sunday, as planned, because it had used too much fuel to return home.
The Falcon Heavy’s upper stage, meanwhile, continued to carry its payload into orbit. But we didn’t get to see much of that trip; SpaceX ended the launch webcast right after booster touchdown at the request of the Space Force. It is not clear when the payloads are to be deployed.
The primary satellite on USSF-67 is Continuous Broadcast Augmenting SATCOM 2 (CBAS-2), which orbits in geostationary orbit approximately 22,200 miles (35,700 km) above Earth.
“CBAS-2 will provide communications relay capability in support of our senior leaders and combatant commanders,” Space Force officials said in an emailed statement Friday (Jan. 13). “CBAS-2’s mission is to enhance existing military satellite communications capabilities and transmit military data continuously via a space-based satellite relay link.”
According to EverydayAstronaut.com, USSF-67 also carried the Long Duration Propulsive ESPA (LDPE)-3A, a payload adapter that can hold up to six small satellites. (opens in new tab),
The Space Force statement revealed that five of those slots were filled on USSF-67. LDPE-3A carried two satellites, Catcher and WASSAT, for the Space Systems Command, the branch of the Space Force responsible for developing and maintaining space capabilities for US war fighters.
Catcher is a prototype sensor designed to monitor potential hazards caused by space weather, reports EverydayAstronaut.com. “WASSAT most likely stands for Wide Area Search Satellite, which is some kind of camera/sensor designed to monitor other satellites and collect data on anomalies such as changes in their trajectories and their orbits,” the outlet wrote.
The other three satellites riding aboard LDPE-3A were developed by the Space Force’s Space Rapid Capabilities Office (SRCO) with the aim of getting to new off-Earth assets quickly and efficiently.
“The SRCO payload includes two operational prototypes for enhanced situational awareness and one operational prototype crypto/interface encryption payload providing secure space-to-ground communications capability,” Space Force officials wrote in Friday’s statement.
November’s USSF-44 was the first Falcon Heavy mission in more than three years, a drought caused primarily by delays by customers in preparing their payloads for liftoff. The other three Falcon Heavy flights (besides USSF-44 and USSF-67) were launched in June 2019, April 2019 and February 2018.
That first flight, a test flight, was quite memorable. It sent SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk’s red Tesla Roadster into orbit around the Sun, carrying a spacesuit-clad mannequin named Starman. Orbit-modelling studies suggest that the car will roam deep space for millions of years before eventually slamming into Venus or Earth.
The Falcon Heavy’s 27 first-stage Merlin engines generate more than 5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, according to its SpaceX specifications page. (opens in new tab), Heavy was the most powerful rocket in operation until the launch of NASA’s Artemis 1 Moon mission on 16 November.
That flight, which sent an uncrewed Orion capsule to lunar orbit and back, was the first launch for NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) megarocket, which generates about 8.8 million pounds of thrust.
However, SpaceX may soon wrest the rocket-power title from NASA. The company is gearing up for the first orbital test flight of its massive Starship Mars rocket, which will use 33 Raptor engines to roar off the pad with a whopping 16 million pounds of thrust — more than any rocket ever.
Mike Wall is the author of “out there (opens in new tab)(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Carl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaelwall (opens in new tab), Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) either Facebook (opens in new tab),