The world's most powerful rocket, SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, blasted off on Tuesday on its highly anticipated maiden test flight, carrying CEO Elon Musk's cherry red Tesla Roadster toward an orbit near Mars. With this debut, the Falcon Heavy becomes the most capable launch vehicle out there.

The SpaceX CEO said the challenges of developing the new rocket meant the chances of a successful first outing might be only 50-50.

"I had this image of just a giant explosion on the pad, a wheel bouncing down the road. But fortunately, that's not what happened," Musk told reporters after the event.

Such performance is slightly more than double that of the world's next most powerful rocket, the Delta IV Heavy - but at one-third of the cost, according to Musk.

The rocket carried a playful payload: Mr Musk's red Roadster, an electric sports car built by his other company, Tesla. Strapped inside the car is a mannequin wearing one of SpaceX's spacesuits. They are expected to orbit the sun for hundreds of millions of years.

SpaceX's webcast showed the Tesla Roadster soaring into space, as David Bowie's "Space Oddity" played in the background -- with the words "DON'T PANIC" visible on the dashboard, in an apparent nod to the sci-fi series "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."

Musk said that he expects the Tesla to zoom around in orbit for hundreds of millions of years. “At times it will come extremely close to Mars,” he said. “And there's a tiny chance that it will hit Mars. Extremely tiny.”

The initial Falcon Heavy launch put the sports car into Earth's orbit for six hours, where it beamed its view of the globe. At 9:30 pm ET, the re-firing of a booster rocket sent the car on its way to Mars' orbit, passing SpaceX's headquarters in Hawthorne, California, just south of Los Angeles.

NASA is currently building a heavy-lift rocket of its own, the Space Launch System, or SLS, that will surpass the Heavy in lift-off and payload capacity and is supposed to someday return humans to the moon. But the first flight of the SLS is expected to take place in late 2019, and delays could push that even further. So SpaceX seems to be holding onto the record for quite some time to come.

At an estimated $90 million per launch, the Falcon Heavy is the cheapest heavy-lift launch option for potential customers ranging from commercial satellite companies to even NASA. </s> SpaceX has done it again.

The pioneering rocket firm just pulled off the unexpected, and carried out what appears to be a seamless first-ever launch of its massive new rocket, called Falcon Heavy.

That makes SpaceX, the game-changing company helmed by billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the owner of the world's most powerful operational rocket.

Falcon Heavy took flight Tuesday around 3:45 pm ET from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

"I'm still trying to absorb everything that happened because it's still kind of surreal to me," Musk told reporters after the launch.

Thousands of onlookers in Florida could be heard cheering on the company's livestream, which was viewed by about 3 million people.

In the run up to launch, it wasn't at all clear that the rocket would work.

"People [came] from all around the world to see what will either be a great rocket launch or the best fireworks display they've ever seen," Musk said in an interview with CNN's Rachel Crane Monday.

Related: Falcon Heavy: How it stacks up with other massive rockets

The rocket's smooth takeoff wasn't the only stunning thing about this launch.

In a never-before-seen feat, SpaceX also managed to guide at least two of the Falcon Heavy's first-stage rocket boosters to land upright back on Earth. They cut back through the Earth's atmosphere and landed in unison at a Kennedy Space Center landing pad.

"That was probably the most exciting thing I've ever seen -- literally ever," Musk said.

The third booster was supposed to land on a sea-faring platform called a droneship -- but just as it was about to land, the livestream cut out. Musk confirmed after the launch that the booster made a crashed.

On board the rocket that's now headed deeper into space is Musk's personal Tesla (TSLA) roadster. At the wheel is a dummy dressed in a spacesuit. Musk said in December the car would play David Bowie's "Space Oddity" on repeat. Cameras on board the car show it cruising by Earth, which appears as a big blue orb in the background. Musk plans to send the car into orbit around the sun.

He announced last year he planned to put his car on the inaugural Falcon Heavy flight. When asked on Twitter why he wanted to throw away a $100,000 vehicle, he replied, "I love the thought of a car drifting apparently endlessly through space and perhaps being discovered by an alien race millions of years in the future."

Related: Everything you need to know about SpaceX's Falcon Heavy

Tuesday's success marked a huge step forward for a company that's already managed to shake up the rocket industry with its groundbreaking technology.

The company made the world take notice when it proved it can safely return first-stage rocket boosters to Earth with its Falcon 9 rocket, which the company has used for more than 40 missions dating back to 2012.

Those rockets have a single first-stage booster, and SpaceX has safely recaptured them after 21 Falcon 9 launches.

Now, SpaceX routinely puts used boosters back to work. In fact, the inaugural Falcon Heavy flight actually used two pre-flown Falcon 9 boosters (the center booster was new.)

Reusing hardware is part of SpaceX's plan to drive down the cost of launches.

Before SpaceX came along, companies just discarded rockets after each mission.

Note the Falcon Heavy is not the most powerful rocket in history. That honor belongs to NASA's Saturn V rocket, which was used for the Apollo moon landings and was retired in the 1970s. </s> CAPE CANAVERAL: The world’s most powerful rocket, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, blasted off Tuesday on its highly anticipated maiden test flight, carrying CEO Elon Musk’s cherry red Tesla Roadster toward an orbit near Mars.

Screams and cheers erupted at mission control in Cape Canaveral, Florida as the massive rocket fired its 27 engines and rumbled into the blue sky over the same NASA launchpad that served as a base for the US missions to the Moon four decades ago.

“The mission went as well as one could have hoped,” an ecstatic Musk told reporters after the launch, calling it “probably the most exciting thing I have seen literally ever.”

“I had this image of a giant explosion on the pad with a wheel bouncing down the road with the Tesla logo landing somewhere,” he said. “Fortunately that is not what happened.”

Loaded with Musk’s red Tesla and a mannequin in a spacesuit, the monster rocket’s historic test voyage captured the world’s imagination.

SpaceX’s webcast showed the Tesla Roadster soaring into space, as David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” played in the background — with the words “DON’T PANIC” visible on the dashboard, in an apparent nod to the sci-fi series the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

Musk posted a live video showing the “Starman” mannequin appearing to cruise, its gloved hand on the wheel, through the darkness of space, with the Earth’s image reflected on the car’s glossy red surface.

If the Roadster survives its five-hour journey through the Van Allen Belt — a region of high radiation where it will be pelted with charged particles — it will attempt a final burn toward Mars, Musk said.

Then, the car would enter an orbit around the Sun that brings it close to Mars, on a journey that could last a billion years and take it as far as 250 million miles (400 million kilometers) from Earth, the same as a trip around the equator 10,000 times.

“Maybe it will be discovered by some future alien race,” Musk told reporters. “What were these guys doing? Did they worship this car?” he mused.

More about the status of the car’s journey is expected in the coming hours.

The Roadster was also outfitted with a data storage unit containing Isaac Asimov’s science fiction book series, the Foundation Trilogy, and a plaque bearing the names of 6,000 SpaceX employees.

About two minutes into the flight, the two side boosters peeled away from the center core and made their way back toward Earth for an upright landing.

Both rockets landed side by side in unison on launchpads, live video images showed.

The third, center booster failed to land on an ocean platform — known as a droneship — as planned.

“It didn’t have enough propellant,” Musk said, adding that it plunged into the ocean about 100 meters (yards) away from its landing point.

“Apparently it hit the water at 300 miles (480 kilometers) an hour and took out two of the engines,” he added.

Experts said the launch would likely catch the eye of the US space agency NASA, which may consider using the Falcon Heavy as a way to fast-track its plans to reach the Moon again for the first time since 1972.

Kennedy Space Center Director Bob Cabana said “the successful launch of a new vehicle on its first flight is a significant accomplishment they can be very proud of.”

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield tweeted: “What we’re watching is @SpaceX leaving all other rocket companies in the dust. Congrats to everyone there!”

The Falcon Heavy launched from the same NASA pad that was the base for the Apollo-era Moon missions of the 1960s and 1970s.

It is “the most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two,” SpaceX said.

That means it can carry twice the payload of United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV Heavy, at a far lower cost — about $90 million per launch compared to $350 million for its competitor.

But the Falcon Heavy is not the most powerful rocket ever — just the biggest in operation today.

The Saturn V rocket that propelled astronauts to the Moon could deliver more payload to orbit. The Soviet-era Energia, which flew twice in 1987 and 1988, was also more powerful.

The Falcon Heavy is essentially three smaller, Falcon 9 rockets strapped together, adding up to a total of 27 engines.

The 230-foot (70-meter) tall rocket is designed to carry nearly 141,000 pounds (64 metric tonnes) into orbit — more than the mass of a fully loaded 737 jetliner.

It was initially intended to restore the possibility of sending humans to the Moon or Mars, but those plans have shifted and now the Falcon Heavy is being considered mainly as a potential equipment carrier to these deep space destinations, Musk said Monday.

Instead, another rocket and spaceship combination being developed by SpaceX, nicknamed BFR — alternately known as “Big Fucking Rocket,” or “Big Falcon Rocket” — would be the vehicle eventually certified for travelers. AFP </s> SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk recently announced on social media that his company was able to successfully fire all of the Falcon Heavy’s 27 Merlin 1D main engines during a hold-down test at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The launch of the company’s biggest rocket has experienced several delays following SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launch and landing failures in 2015 and 2016. Musk initially wanted the Falcon Heavy program to officially launch its first rocket in 2013, but that didn’t happen as engineers had to deal with unforeseen issues related to basically strapping three Falcon 9 first stage boosters and launching it as one vehicle. More importantly, Musk wanted the entire thing to be completely reusable, a strategy that brings with it its own set of technical issues.

All of the Falcon Heavy’s 27 engines were ignited at 12:30 p.m. EST on Wednesday, with SpaceX ramping its engines close to full capacity. All in all, the rocket was able to generate around five million pounds of thrust, making it one of the most powerful rockets ever built. The Falcon Heavy rocket’s thrust figures officially exceeded the thrust capacity of the current world’s most powerful active heavy-lift launch vehicle, the Ariane 5. According to SpaceX, the 3.1 million pound rocket should be able to lift around 140,700 pounds into low earth orbit.

After the test, the Falcon Heavy is scheduled to be brought back into SpaceX’s hangar, where it will undergo several tests and final checks for its official first demo launch. Instead of using a traditional dummy satellite as its test payload, Musk had previously announced that he will be loading his own Tesla Roadster on board. The rocket will then attempt to bring the electric sports car into a heliocentric solar orbit, which will take it close to the Sun and around Mars.

Launching the rocket into orbit will just be the first hurdle to overcome as SpaceX is planning to guide and land all three boosters safely back to earth. The first two side boosters will separate from the rocket’s core within less than three minutes after liftoff. The two rockets will then be guided into hopefully uneventful and safe landings at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The center booster will then drop a bit later and land at SpaceX’s mobile recovery barge stationed somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. A smaller upper stage rocket will then continue on to drop the payload into orbit.

The company has yet to officially announce the Falcon Heavy’s inaugural launch, but Musk has teased that it could be happening in just a couple of weeks. Due to its reusable nature, the successful launch and retrieval of the Falcon Heavy could significantly change the space transportation industry by drastically bringing the down cost to bring cargo and passengers into orbit. </s> CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The first-ever test flight for SpaceX’s monstrous new rocket is planned for Tuesday.

It’s called Falcon Heavy and it’ll become the most powerful rocket in use.

WATCH LIVE: SpaceX launches the Falcon Heavy, the rocket that could go to Mars

The rocket is poised for its first test at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Takeoff is slated to happen Tuesday between 10:30 a.m. PST and 1 p.m. PST.

“People [came] from all around the world to see what will either be a great rocket launch or the best fireworks display they’ve ever seen,” Elon Musk said in an interview with CNN’s Rachel Crane.

If Tuesday doesn’t work out, due to weather or some other delay, there’s a backup launch window on Wednesday.

Why all the buzz for this launch?

For one, this rocket is built by SpaceX, the game-changing company helmed by billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

SpaceX has shaken up the rocket industry by becoming the first company to successfully reuse rocket boosters in order bring down the cost of space flight. To do that, it guides the rockets back to Earth for a safe landing after they send their payloads into orbit.

So far, SpaceX has safely recaptured first-stage boosters after 21 of its 40-plus Falcon 9 launches.

The Falcon Heavy rocket is essentially three Falcon 9s strapped together, which means there are three first-stage rocket boosters.

SpaceX will try to guide all three of those boosters back to Earth after launch. Two will attempt a synchronized landing back at Kennedy Space Center, and the third will land on a droneship.

It should also be noted that two of those rocket boosters are actually used Falcon 9 boosters that have flown on previous missions.

And Musk has thrown in a branding stunt with this launch.

Most first-time rocket test flights have a dummy payload on board. But instead of a hunk of metal, Musk has opted to send his personal Tesla roadster to space with this launch.

The plan is to send the car into an orbit around the Sun that will, at times, be as far away from the Sun as Mars. Musk says the car will play an endless loop of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.”

Of course, there’s a chance this rocket doesn’t make it to orbit. Because of its design, it’s extremely difficult to test this rocket on the ground. So SpaceX says putting it on a launch pad and seeing if it flies is the next step in the design process.

SpaceX has taken a long time preparing for this test launch. The company said back in 2011 that the rocket would be ready in 2013. That target eventually moved to November 2017, then December.

But now, with a firm launch date in place, it’s clear the company is dead set on getting this rocket in the air.

If you’re not lucky enough to be in the Cape Canaveral area, you can watch the launch online here. </s> The Falcon Heavy rocket will launch from the same pad that NASA used for Apollo 11 that saw Neal Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin whisked away to the moon - it will also be the most powerful launch since the Saturn V. The paperwork refers to the “modified Tesla Roadster (mass simulator)” that is contained within the rocket and will be launched into space. It reads: “’Flight’ shall mean the flight of a Falcon Heavy launch vehicle, commencing with the ignition of the first stage from Kennedy Space Centre (KSC) and transporting the modified Tesla Roadster to a hyperbolic orbit. “Flight includes landing of the Falcon Heavy first stage core and side boosters as indicated in the license application.

“A flight is concluded upon SpaceX's last exercise of control over the Falcon Heavy vehicle, including the de-arming of Falcon Heavy vehicle stages or components that reach a hyperbolic orbit.” Mr Musk added that the destination of the Roadster “is Mars' orbit” as he joked that it will sit in “deep space for a billion years” as long as it does not “blow up on ascent”. He tweeted: “Payload will be my midnight cherry Tesla Roadster playing Space Oddity. Destination is Mars orbit. “Will be in deep space for a billion years or so if it doesn’t blow up on the ascent.”

SpaceX is targeting its launch for 10.30am PT (18.30pm GMT) tomorrow. However, it is possible that the launch is delayed due to the size and scope of the project. Assuming the takeoff is successful, the Falcon Heavy will attempt to land at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station by using its trio of rockets in harmony.

Three rockets remarkably similar to the Falcon 9 are put together on the Heavy that provides it with an incredible amount of power. The Heavy is able to lift roughly 64 metric tons into orbit - a weight heavier than a 737 jet full of passengers and crew. Last year, Elon Musk remarked that the launch has a “really good chance” that it does not make it into orbit. </s> CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — On a personal quest to settle Mars, SpaceX founder Elon Musk envisions 1,000 passenger ships flying en masse to the red planet well within the next century, “Battlestar Galactica” style.

Musk outlined his zealous plan Tuesday to establish a self-sustaining city on Mars, complete with iron foundries and even pizzerias. He wants to make humans a multiplanetary species, and says the best way to do that is to colonize the red planet.

“I think Earth will be a good place for a long time, but the probable lifespan of human civilization will be much greater if we’re a multiplanetary species,” he said.

Musk, who also runs electric car maker Tesla Motors, received a wildly warm reception at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico. Many in the crowd were avid space buffs.

For now, the aerospace company he founded in 2002 is focusing on satellite deliveries, as well as space station cargo runs for NASA and a future crew capsule for U.S. astronauts. Its Falcon rocket, though, is grounded for the second time in a year because of devastating accidents.

During his address, Musk did not mention the Sept. 1 launch pad explosion that destroyed a Falcon rocket and its satellite.

Instead, he noted that SpaceX already has begun work on the Mars Colonial fleet, recently test-firing a powerful new rocket engine named Raptor. The system ultimately could take people to the moons of Jupiter and beyond, he said.

Musk said it would be a “super-exciting” adventure to Mars but also dangerous, at least for the first few trips. His goal is to get the price down so anyone could afford to go, with a ticket costing no more than a house on Earth. He’s shooting for 1 million Martians.

Would he go, someone asked? Perhaps ultimately, but it would depend on whether he had a good succession plan in place. As for being the first Martian, the risk of fatalities will be high — “there’s just no way around it” — and he wants to see his five young sons grow up.

“It would be basically, are you prepared to die? If that’s OK, then you’re a candidate for going,” he told the audience.

In April, Musk announced plans to send an unmanned Dragon capsule to land on Mars as early as 2018. NASA is offering technical support, but no money. The space agency has its own program to get astronauts to Mars in the 2030s, using its own hardware.

Musk invited industry to join the Mars effort, which will represent a $10 billion investment. SpaceX currently is spending a few tens of millions of dollars on the enterprise, and the amount will soon grow, he said.

Musk described in detail his plans to launch a monster-size rocket — larger than even NASA’s Saturn V moon rocket — from the same launch pad at Kennedy Space Center from which the Apollo astronauts departed for the lunar surface in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The first-stage boosters would return to land vertically — just like his Falcon rocket boosters do now. Reusability, in fact, is essential to any plan for getting humans to Mars, as is refilling fuel tanks in Earth orbit and creating rocket fuel at Mars for return trips, he said.

The rocket would hoist a spaceship big enough to carry 100 to 200 people to Mars, a trip lasting several months, quicker with nuclear propulsion. Musk promised no one would be stuck there; spaceships would return regularly, and “you get a free return trip if you want.”

“Ultimately what I’m trying to achieve here is to make Mars seem possible, make it seem as though it’s something that we can do in our lifetimes,” he said. </s> SpaceX launched its first commercial mission Thursday featuring its Falcon Heavy rocket and accomplished something they've never done before.

The Falcon Heavy is currently the world's most powerful rocket and is carrying a communications satellite into space.

After liftoff, SpaceX successfully landed two side-boosters back at Cape Canaveral and the rocket's core on a droneship stationed in the Atlantic Ocean. It was the first time all three landed successfully.

During last year's test flight, the side-boosters landed, but the rocket's core missed its mark.

SpaceX chief Elon Musk celebrated the news on twitter, declaring the "Falcons have landed."

The Falcon Heavy was poised to blast off Wednesday night, but SpaceX chief Elon Musk said upper-level wind shear was extremely high.

Last year's Falcon Heavy test flight put a sports car — Musk's own Tesla convertible — into space.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

A Falcon Heavy SpaceX rocket sits on pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., after the launch was scrubbed Wednesday, April 10, 2019. </s> HAWTHORNE — Hawthorne-based SpaceX will try again Thursday to make the first commercial launch of its Falcon Heavy, billed as the most powerful rocket ever assembled.

The Arabsat-6A mission from Cape Canaveral in Florida was originally scheduled for Tuesday, then pushed to Wednesday due to bad weather. On Wednesday, the launch was first delayed by 90 minutes due to upper-level winds, then scrubbed altogether when the windy conditions persisted.

When the rocket launches, it will be the second flight for Falcon Heavy. The massive rocket, which is actually an array of three rockets, made its debut in February 2018 when it launched a cherry-red Tesla roadster with a “Starman” space-suited driver propped behind the wheel on a test mission.

The next launch, however, will be the first commercial use of the Falcon Heavy. The rocket is scheduled to carry the 13,200-pound Arabsat-6A satellite into orbit, providing communications services to areas of Africa, Europe and the Middle East.

The 230-feet-tall, 27-engine Falcon Heavy is essentially triple the size of SpaceX’s traditional Falcon 9 rockets. According SpaceX, the liftoff thrust of Falcon Heavy is roughly equivalent to 18 full-powered 747 jetliners.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk has called Falcon Heavy “the most powerful rocket in the world by a factor of two and the highest payload launch vehicle to reach orbit after the Saturn V moon rocket.”

The Falcon Heavy includes a massive center rocket booster, coupled with two side rocket boosters. The most visually spectacular part of last year’s Falcon Heavy mission occurred when SpaceX successfully landed the two Falcon 9 side rockets simultaneously back on land at Cape Canaveral following the launch. The company attempted, but failed, to recover the center booster rocket on a barge floating in the Atlantic Ocean.

SpaceX has become known for recovering its rockets for reuse in future missions. The company will again attempt to recover all three of the rockets in the array on Thursday — two on land and one at sea.
SpaceX successfully launches its Falcon Heavy rocket, a feat the space company hopes will lead to increased commercial and national security missions. Both boosters were successfully landed and recovered. The core didn't land and was softly ditched in the water near the drone ship. The rocket launched Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster, playing "Life on Mars" by David Bowie, which is expected to be in an elliptic orbit of the sun, close to Mars, for several hundred million years.