- Launcher
- Falcon Heavy
#falcon-heavy#vehicles
Falcon Heavy combines a core stage and two side boosters derived from Falcon 9, with 27 Merlin engines in total. The February 2018 demonstration flight sent a Tesla Roadster into heliocentric orbit and showed both side boosters landing simultaneously.
The launcher flies less often than Falcon 9 and serves mainly heavy or energy-demanding payloads: geostationary satellites, national-security missions, and NASA science probes. Starship is intended to take over the heaviest payloads in future, but remains in flight testing.
Key context
- First flight: 6 February 2018 from pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center.
- Three boosters with nine Merlin engines each, 27 engines at liftoff.
- Side boosters land on shore; the core stage lands on a droneship or is expended depending on the mission profile.
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Sources & further reading
Spaceflightpedia. (n.d.). Falcon Heavy. Retrieved 20 October 2026, from https://spaceflightpedia.com/article/falcon-heavy
article text — CC-BY-SA · ◉ NASA photography — public domain · ✦ AI illustration — marked, generated from sources
