Falcon Heavy

Falcon Heavy is SpaceX’s heavy-lift rocket. Its first stage is three Falcon 9 cores side by side—a center core and two side boosters—whose 27 Merlin engines fire together at liftoff. The side boosters separate first and usually fly back to land near the launch site; the center core burns longer and is usually not recovered.

Falcon Heavy first flew on February 6, 2018, and had launched 13 times by the end of September 2026, every time from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Its 12th flight, on April 29, 2026, carried the ViaSat-3 F3 communications satellite.

NASA has launched four primary missions on Falcon Heavy: Psyche in 2023, the GOES-U weather satellite for NOAA and Europa Clipper in 2024, and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on August 30, 2026. On the Roman launch, the two side boosters returned to the launch site after separating from the center core.

Read more about Falcon Heavy

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