![]() NASA is currently building an even more powerful rocket known as the Space Launch System, or SLS, that will generate 8.8 million pounds of thrust in its initial configuration and up to 11.9 million pounds in a follow-on cargo variant. After a final rocket firing by the Heavy's upper stage, the Tesla had a velocity of nearly 27,000 mph. The Falcon Heavy boosted Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster into an orbit around the sun with a high point in the astroid belt near the dwarf planet Ceres and a low point near the orbit of Earth. While the Tesla on board for the rocket's first test flight tipped the scales at a relatively modest one ton or thereabouts, the Heavy has the ability to boost nearly 140,000 pounds to low-Earth orbit and more than 37,000 pounds to Earth-escape trajectories to Mars. The mission has begun really as well as one could have hoped with the exception of the center core." "But fortunately, that's not what happened. "I had this image of a giant explosion on the pad and a wheel bouncing down the road and the Tesla logo landing somewhere with a thud," he told reporters after launch. Eight minutes after the rocket took off, two of the three Falcon 9 core stages that helped power the vehicle out of the lower atmosphere made rocket-powered descents to side-by-side touchdowns at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, generating thunderous sonic booms as they slowed for landing. Spectacular as it was, the launching was just the appetizer for a long-awaited test flight. It was easily the loudest and possibly most dramatic launch from Florida's "Space Coast" since NASA's space shuttle was retired in 2011 with the Falcon Heavy, made up of three strapped-together core stages powered by nine engines each, putting on a dazzling show for tourists and area residents jamming nearby roads and beaches. SEE MORE: Watch the entire SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch here. ![]() ![]() SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, the world's most powerful rocket, thundered to life and shot away from Florida Tuesday on the power of 27 engines and nearly 5 million pounds of thrust, kicking off a spectacular maiden flight to send founder Elon Musk's cherry red Tesla Roadster on a "just for fun" journey into the asteroid belt well beyond Mars. SpaceX launches Falcon Heavy in dramatic maiden flight 02:15
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