page_title: Falcon Heavy
section_title: Maiden flight
hierarchical_section_title: Falcon Heavy / History / Maiden flight
caption_attribution_description: &#160;
context_page_description: The Falcon Heavy is a partially reusable heavy-lift launch vehicle designed and manufactured by SpaceX. It is derived from the Falcon 9 vehicle and consists of a strengthened Falcon 9 first stage as the center core with two additional Falcon 9-like first stages as strap-on boosters. The Falcon Heavy has the highest payload capacity of any currently operational launch vehicle, the third-highest capacity of any rocket ever to reach orbit, trailing the Saturn V and Energia, and the third-highest capacity of any orbital-class rocket ever launched successfully.
  SpaceX conducted the Falcon Heavy's maiden launch on February 6, 2018, at 3:45 p.m. EST. The rocket carried a Tesla Roadster belonging to SpaceX founder Elon Musk, carrying a dummy dubbed "Starman", as a dummy payload. The second Falcon Heavy launch occurred on April 11, 2019 and all three booster rockets successfully returned to earth. The third Falcon Heavy launch successfully occurred on June 25, 2019. Since then, the Falcon Heavy has been certified for the National Security Space Launch program.
context_section_description: In April 2011, Musk was planning for a first launch of Falcon Heavy from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the West Coast in 2013. SpaceX refurbished Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg AFB to accommodate Falcon 9 and Heavy. The first launch from the Cape Canaveral East Coast launch complex was planned for late 2013 or 2014.
  Due partly to the failure of SpaceX CRS-7 in June 2015, SpaceX rescheduled the maiden Falcon Heavy flight in September 2015 to occur no earlier than April 2016, but by February 2016 had postponed it again to late 2016. The flight was to be launched from the refurbished Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A.
  In August 2016, the demonstration flight was moved to early 2017, then to summer 2017, to late 2017 and was launched in February 2018.
  A second flight occurred on April 11, 2019, launching Arabsat-6A. A third flight occurred on June 25, 2019 launching the STP-2 (DoD Space Test Program) payload. The payload was composed of 25 small spacecraft. Operational GTO missions for Intelsat and Inmarsat, which were planned for late 2017, were moved to the Falcon 9 Full Thrust rocket version as it had become powerful enough to lift those heavy payloads in its expendable configuration.
  At a July 2017 meeting of the International Space Station Research and Development meeting in Washington, D.C., Musk downplayed expectations for the success of the maiden flight:
  There's a real good chance the vehicle won't make it to orbit ... I hope it makes it far enough away from the pad that it does not cause pad damage. I would consider even that a win, to be honest.
  Musk went on to say the integration and structural challenges of combining three Falcon 9 cores were much more difficult than expected. The plan was for all three cores to land back on Earth after launch.
  In December 2017, Musk tweeted that the dummy payload on the maiden Falcon Heavy launch would be his personal Tesla Roadster playing David Bowie's "Life on Mars", and that it would be launched into an orbit around the Sun that will reach the orbit of Mars. He released pictures in the following days. The car had three cameras attached to provide "epic views".
  On December 28, 2017, the Falcon Heavy was moved to the launch pad in preparation of a static fire test of all 27 engines, which was expected on January 19, 2018. However, due to the U.S. government shutdown that began on January 20, the testing and launch were further delayed.
  The static fire test was conducted on January 24, 2018. Musk confirmed via Twitter that the test "was good" and later announced the rocket would be launched on February 6.
  On February 6, 2018, after a delay of over two hours due to high winds, Falcon Heavy lifted off at 3:45pm EST. Its side boosters landed safely on Landing Zones 1 and 2 a few minutes later. However, only one of the three engines on the center booster that were intended to restart ignited during its descent, causing it to hit the water next to the droneship at a speed of over 480 km/h (300 mph).
  Initially, Elon Musk tweeted that the Roadster had overshot its planned heliocentric orbit, and would reach the asteroid belt. In fact, observations by telescopes showed that the Roadster would only slightly exceed the orbit of Mars at aphelion.
caption: Maiden launch of the Falcon Heavy
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