SpaceX Will Attempt Falcon Heavy Triple Booster Landing Following Tomorrow's Historic Launch

falcon heavy 2
All eyes will be on Cape Canaveral early Tuesday afternoon when SpaceX will attempt to launch its long-awaited Falcon Heavy rocket. The company's existing Falcon 9 rocket is pretty much a known quantity at this point, and had a stellar record in 2017. However, strapping together what are essentially three Falcon 9 cores and launching the whole shebang into space is an incredible engineering feat that even SpaceX CEO Elon Musk isn't certain that his company can pull off tomorrow.

However, if everything does go according to plan, SpaceX will attempt another first -- it will try to recover all three boosters after successfully pushing its payload into orbit. According to SpaceX, the two side boosters -- which were used on previous missions -- will return to dry land at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on the company's Landing Zone 1 and 2 pads. The central booster will make its landing off the Florida coast on the “Of Course I Still Love You” autonomous droneship.

SpaceX is warning residents in the surrounding communities to not be alarmed if they hear some odd noises during the landing attempts. "There is the possibility that residents of Brevard, Indian River, Orange, Osceola, Seminole, and Volusia counties may hear one or more sonic booms during the landing attempts," writes the company. "Residents of Brevard County are most likely to hear one or more sonic booms, although what residents’ experience will depend on weather conditions and other factors."

spacex tesla roadster

As we have previously mentioned, the payload on this inaugural launch of Falcon Heavy will be Musk's own first-generation Tesla Roadster. The electric car will be sent into an elliptical orbit around the sun, which will see it pass closely by planet Mars.

Musk posted an image to Instagram earlier this morning (while giving out a shoutout to the late, great David Bowie) showing that the Tesla Roadster actually has a passenger. In this case, it's a "dummy" astronaut wearing one of SpaceX's prototype spacesuits. The spacesuits will be used on future SpaceX missions for astronauts being transported inside the Crew Dragon capsule.

Falcon Heavy is scheduled to blast off tomorrow afternoon with the launch window starting at 1:30pm and ending at 4pm EST.

Brandon Hill

Brandon Hill

Brandon received his first PC, an IBM Aptiva 310, in 1994 and hasn’t looked back since. He cut his teeth on computer building/repair working at a mom and pop computer shop as a plucky teen in the mid 90s and went on to join AnandTech as the Senior News Editor in 1999. Brandon would later help to form DailyTech where he served as Editor-in-Chief from 2008 until 2014. Brandon is a tech geek at heart, and family members always know where to turn when they need free tech support. When he isn’t writing about the tech hardware or studying up on the latest in mobile gadgets, you’ll find him browsing forums that cater to his long-running passion: automobiles.

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