SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket launches the X-37B spaceplane
SOCIETY: US ROCKET LAUNCH
NEW YORK, December 29th. /TASS/. The US aerospace agency NASA and the company SpaceX have launched the Falcon Heavy rocket with the unmanned military space plane X-37B.
The rocket lifted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1:07 a.m. GMT on December 29.
Falcon Heavy, a partially reusable super-heavy lift launch vehicle, is part of the Falcon family developed by Elon Musk's SpaceX company.
Falcon Heavy was originally developed for the Crew Dragon manned spacecraft and future missions to the Moon and Mars. However, Musk announced after the first launch that the vehicle would only be used to send heavy satellites into orbit. There are plans to replace SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, as well as the Dragon ships, with a fully reusable heavy-lift launch vehicle. The project, called Big Falcon Rocket (BFR), was presented in September 2017 at the International Astronautical Congress in Australia. Musk said in November 2018 that the project had been renamed Starship.
ТАСС 12/29/2023, 4:37 a.m. MSK