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FLORIDA: The world's most powerful operational rocket, SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, launched its first commercial mission from Florida on Thursday, April 11 as part of a key event for the billionaire space company Elon Musk, a contractor in the United States. race to conquer lucrative military launch contracts.
The 23-storey Heavy, which had previously launched the Musk Cherry Tesla red roadster in space during a test flight early in 2018, left the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to carry its first payload .
"More than 33 seconds after the start of the flight, with a push force of 5.1 million pounds, Falcon Heavy is heading for space," SpaceX launch commentator John Insprucker said in a statement. live video stream.
About three minutes after clearing the platform, Heavy's two side boosters separated from the central rocket for a synchronized landing at Cape Canaveral Air Force Base, inspiring SpaceX engineers at the company's headquarters to Hawthorne, California.
The central thruster, after pushing the payload back into space, returned nearly 10 minutes later for a successful landing on the SpaceX marine drone spacecraft located 645 km off the coast of Florida. During the 2018 test mission, Heavy & # 39; s main core missed the vessel and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean.
A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, carrying the Arabsat 6A communications satellite, takes off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida on April 11, 2019. (Photo: Reuters / Joe Skipper)
"The Falcons have landed," wrote Musk on Twitter, ushering in the first three rocket booster recovery system, which will be redeveloped and reintegrated into another Falcon Heavy mission this summer to carry a swarm of military and scientific satellites for the future. 39, army of the air. .
The takeoff with the new Heavy Military Certified Falcon 9 engines played a crucial role in the race: Boeing-Lockheed's United Launch Alliance and Jeff Bezos' Musk & # 39; s SpaceX Blue Origin to try and prove his rocket fleet, mission one-third of all space missions of US national security – coveted military contracts worth several billion.
The US Air Force called on SpaceX in 2018 to launch a $ 130 million classified military satellite. In February, she added three additional missions to a $ 297 million contract.
SpaceX and Boeing Co are attempting to send humans into space from US soil for the first time in nearly a decade as part of NASA's commercial team program. SpaceX's CX Dragon capsule, on top of a Falcon 9 rocket, made its first unmanned test flight in March before the crewed mission scheduled for July, while the first unmanned test of the Boeing's Starliner capsule is scheduled for August on the Atlas 5 rocket of ULA.
Falcon Heavy was carrying a communications satellite for the Arabian telecommunications company Arabsat, which will transmit Internet and television services to Africa, Europe and the Middle East.
SpaceX, also known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp, was founded in 2002 by Musk, who is also co-founder of electric car manufacturer Tesla Inc.
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