Falcon Heavy around Max Q. Credit: SpaceX
Edinburgh, 2 November 2022. – After more than three years, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy launched back into space carrying US military payloads as part of the USSF-44 mission to Earth orbit geosynchronous
Falcon Heavy consists of three modified Falcon 9 first stage boosters. Both side boosters landed safely on Earth and will be ready to fly again on a future US Space Force mission. These landings were the 150th and 151st successful landings of an orbital-class rocket by SpaceX.
It had also been planned to recover the two fairing halves that protect the mission’s payloads for future reuse. However, Falcon Heavy’s core booster was dropped into the Atlantic Ocean. The reason for this is that the orbital requirements of the USSF-44 payloads meant that the core had to dedicate the maximum amount of fuel to the deployment.
The USSF-44 mission is the fourth Falcon Heavy launch overall following the STP-2 mission in June 2019. The launch vehicle previously deployed the Arabsat-6A satellite in April 2019 and launched a Tesla Roadster in space in February 2018.
The primary payload for the USSF-44 mission was LDPE-2, a long-duration EELV (Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle) secondary payload adapter. The LDPE-2 spacecraft was built by Northrop Grumman, with six additional payloads. The Tetra-1 microsatellite built by Millennium Space Systems was also aboard the Falcon Heavy during the mission.