Edinburgh, 2 November 2022. – After more than three years, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy has once again launched into space carrying US military cargo as part of the USSF-44 mission into geosynchronous Earth orbit. Falcon Heavy consists of three modified Falcon 9 first stage boosters. The two side boosters landed safely on Earth and will be prepared for re-flight on a future US Space Force mission. These landings were SpaceX’s 150th and 151st successful landings of an orbital-class rocket. The two fairing halves protecting the mission’s payloads were also designed to be recovered for future reuse. However, the Falcon Heavy’s central core booster was allowed to fall into the Atlantic Ocean. The reason for this is that the orbital requirements of the USSF-44 payloads meant that the central core had to devote maximum fuel to deployment. The USSF-44 mission is the fourth launch for the Falcon Heavy overall following the STP-2 mission in June 2019. Prior to that, the launch vehicle deployed the Arabsat-6A satellite in April 2019 and launched a Tesla Roadster into space in February 2018. The primary payload of the USSF-44 mission was LDPE-2, a long-endurance Propulsive EELV (Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle) secondary payload adapter. The LDPE-2 spacecraft was built by Northrop Grumman, carrying an additional six payloads. The Tetra-1 microsatellite built by Millennium Space Systems was also aboard the Falcon Heavy during the mission.
