The launch was spotted by astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS), who shared a stunning photo of the rocket’s contrail as it soared through Earth’s atmosphere. The image, taken from 250 miles above Earth, shows the Falcon Heavy streaking across a blue sky with its two side boosters trailing behind.
“It was an amazing sight to see this powerful rocket take off and streak across our view,” said astronaut Jessica Meir in a statement released by NASA. “We were able to watch it for several minutes before we had to move on.”
The Falcon Heavy is SpaceX’s most powerful operational rocket and can lift more than 140,000 pounds into orbit — twice as much as any other existing launcher — making it ideal for launching large satellites or sending spacecraft beyond low-Earth orbit. This mission marked only its fourth flight since 2018; however, SpaceX plans to use this reliable workhorse more often in 2021 with up to six launches planned over the next 12 months alone.
This latest launch also marks another milestone for Elon Musk’s space exploration company: It is now officially providing services not just for commercial customers but also military ones too after being certified last year by U.S Air Force Space Command under their National Security Space Launch program (NSSL). With such capabilities at hand and ambitious goals ahead of them like colonizing Mars one day soon, there’s no doubt that SpaceX will continue pushing boundaries when it comes exploring outer space!
*****
Thanks for reading! This website is an experimental news aggregator, with this article and image automatically generated using OpenAI’s ChatGPT & DALL-E. If any text or image was weird or inaccurate, it’s because the artificial intelligence became confused. We encourage you to check out the original article here. And be sure to give the real human authors some support by commenting, following them on social media, listening to their podcasts, etc. Thanks!