(Bloomberg) — SpaceX’s mighty Falcon Heavy rocket launched from the Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday, carrying classified payloads for the U.S. Space Force. The launch returned the Falcon Heavy to flight after a hiatus of more than three years.
The rocket lifted off in dense fog at 9:41 a.m. local time. It is part of a mission called USSF 44 and is the first operational national security space mission for the Falcon Heavy.
After liftoff, the Falcon Heavy’s two side thrusters separated and landed on two of SpaceX’s runways off the coast of Florida. The bottom of the core booster fell back to Earth as planned and SpaceX made no attempt to retrieve it.
The top of the core booster is expected to ascend deeper into space and place the Space Force payloads into their intended orbit approximately 22,000 miles above Earth. Due to the classified nature of the mission, SpaceX ended the release prior to the completion of the flight and separation of the payloads.
The successful launch is good news for SpaceX, even though the Falcon Heavy rocket has flown infrequently since its debut and has only a handful of customers.
Elon Musk, chief executive of Space Exploration Technologies Corp., first announced plans to build the rocket in 2011, pitching it as a powerful new option for customers who need to launch large satellites. The big rocket has about a dozen launches planned over the next few years, with most flights designated for Defense Department and NASA science missions.
But the Falcon Heavy hasn’t lived up to its commercial promise as a rocket in the same way that the Falcon 9 has. It accounts for a tiny fraction of SpaceX’s launches, while the workhorse Falcon 9 handles most of the company’s business. Falcon Heavy’s low launch frequency speaks to the current market for satellite launches, as well as changes in SpaceX’s strategy for the market. The company has vastly improved its Falcon 9 rocket over the past decade, making it a more powerful rocket. And as SpaceX focuses on its very large interplanetary rocket, Starship, for more ambitious deep space missions, there appears to be less need for the Falcon Heavy.
Caleb Henry, senior analyst at research and advisory firm Quilty Analytics, said: “The Falcon Heavy is being squeezed at both ends, on one end by the Falcon 9, which has taken on much of its responsibility, and on the other end. , for Starship, which can assume the future responsibilities of Falcon Heavy.”
The Falcon 9 has proven to be adequate for much of the commercial satellite market, especially as the rocket’s capabilities have grown. Prior to 2016, SpaceX listed the Falcon 9 as capable of launching 29,000 pounds into low Earth orbit. Thanks to several upgrades, the Falcon 9 can now achieve more than 50,000 pounds in low Earth orbit.
Falcon Heavy
While the Falcon Heavy can still lift much more than that (over 140,000 pounds in low Earth orbit), its nose cone is still the same size as the Falcon 9, limiting the satellites it can transport “It’s launching payloads that have more mass, but it can’t accommodate something with a significantly larger volume,” said Carissa Christensen, CEO of BryceTech, a spaceflight analytics company. “So there are only certain payloads that really need a Heavy instead of the 9.”
With much of the commercial satellite market satisfied by the Falcon 9, this leaves only the largest payloads destined for distant orbits for the Falcon Heavy. It’s a small group composed mostly of Department of Defense national security satellites, NASA science payloads and just a handful of the largest commercial satellites from customers like Viasat Inc. and EchoStar Corp.
One advantage the Falcon Heavy still has over the Falcon 9 is that it can send larger satellites directly into geostationary orbit, a path 22,000 miles (35,406 kilometers) higher that has been popular for telecommunications. The Falcon 9 can also put satellites into this orbit, but the rocket usually has to lift the satellites into a lower transfer orbit first. From there, the satellites rise to higher orbit. This process takes time, often months, which delays companies from using their satellites immediately.
“What we have seen is that [geostationary] the market has dried up,” Henry said. “And also, a surprising number of customers are willing to wait and let their spacecraft make that orbit over the course of several months.”
The Falcon 9 is also SpaceX’s rocket of choice to launch the company’s Starlink Internet satellites from space into low Earth orbit. It is likely due to the agility of the rocket. The Falcon 9 has the ability to take off from multiple sites in Florida and California, while the Falcon Heavy can only launch from one SpaceX site for now. And the Falcon 9 has a significantly reduced response time, making it easier to launch more satellites in a given year. “There is a stronger business case for the Falcon 9,” Henry said.
Many of the more ambitious uses SpaceX has touted for the Falcon Heavy, such as flying passengers to deep space destinations like the Moon, are no longer planned for the rocket. Those trips are now reserved for SpaceX’s Starship rocket, which is tasked with landing people on the moon for NASA. For missions closer to home, the Falcon 9 continues to ferry people back and forth to the International Space Station in low Earth orbit.
Still, despite the challenges, it’s too early to write off the Falcon Heavy. It takes years for satellite manufacturers to develop new spacecraft, so more vehicles needing the Falcon Heavy’s capabilities may soon be connected. “You might have a vehicle with more capacity and the payloads take a while to catch up,” Christensen said.
(Updates with context in the Falcon Heavy program. Corrected an earlier version to specify that the lower part of the core booster was not recovered.)
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