Falcon Heavy is the most powerful rocket in operation with more than 5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff. By comparison, that equals approximately eighteen 747 aircraft at full power.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX on Tuesday launched a classified USSF-44 mission for the U.S. Space Force on board its towering Falcon Heavy rocket. The launch came more than three years after the Space Test Program-2 (STP-2) mission in June 2019, which carried experimental satellites on a demonstration flight for the Pentagon. It was also the company’s record 50^th launch this year from the Falcon series, with most from the Falcon 9. (CNBC)

The Falcon Heavy rocket made its debut in February 2018, and this was its third launch. It lifted off at 9:41 a.m. ET from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

According to CNBC, the number of launches of the Falcon Heavy would have been more but for delay in readying payloads by launch customers.

During Tuesday’s launch, two of the rocket’s first-stage rocket boosters — the tall white sticks that are strapped together to give the rocket its heightened power at liftoff – were recovered. They landed on ground pads near the Florida coastline. However, the central booster was jettisoned into the ocean with no plans for its recovery.

The US military’s Space Systems Command said only that the launch will put multiple satellites into orbit on behalf of the Space Systems Command’s Innovation and Prototyping Delta.

Not much other information was available about the mission objective.

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