Oct. 31 (UPI) — SpaceX will launch a Falcon Heavy rocket on Tuesday for the first time in more than three years as part of a U.S. Space Force mission.
The rocket is being launched for the USSF-44 mission and is expected to deploy two spacecraft payloads directly into geosynchronous orbit including the TETRA 1 microsatellite developed by Boeing subsidiary Millennium Space Systems for the U.S. military, NASA’s Kennedy Space Center said in a news release.
Little else is known about the two payloads as the mission is mostly classified.
It is scheduled to lift off at 9:40 a.m. from Launch Complex 39A at the Kenny Space Center, according to NASA. Weather conditions are expected to be favorable for the launch Tuesday.
“The threat for showers over land will be low going into the primary launch window Tuesday morning with fog and stratus potentially around in the morning,” Space Launch Delta 45 forecasters said Sunday.
“An isolated shower moving in from the Atlantic can’t be ruled out, which will be the primary weather concern for the launch.”
The Falcon Heavy rocket’s two side boosters are expected to land on Landing Zone 1 and Landing Zone 2 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
During the landing, viewers can expect to experience a double sonic boom from their re-entry into the atmosphere.
SpaceX has described the Falcon Heavy rocket as the “most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two.”
It is composed of three Falcon 9 nine-engine cores whose 27 Merlin engines together generate more than 5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, equal to approximately eighteen 747 aircraft.
The launch Tuesday is the first time a Falcon Heavy rocket is lifted off since June 2019 and will be just the fourth mission ever for the rocket, which debuted in 2018.
