Falcon Heavy Demo Flight

A decade-long journey to the launch pad could end on Tuesday for SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket with the long-awaited maiden launch of the tri-core rocket. With a commercial launch license from the FAA in hand, a clean Launch Readiness Review and fair weather forecast, SpaceX wheeled the monster rocket up the ramp to Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center Sunday night and placed it in its vertical launch position for liftoff on Tuesday during a two-and-a-half-hour window opening at 18:30 UTC, 1:30 p.m. local time.

Instead of boilerplate mass simulators flown by other rockets on their inaugural missions, Musk chose a more colorful payload for Falcon Heavy’s maiden voyage: a cherry-red Tesla Roadster from one of his other entrepreneurial ventures. If all goes well, Falcon Heavy is planned to send the automobile into an elliptical heliocentric orbit venturing as far as the distance of Mars.