The SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket is ready for liftoff, for its maiden voyage, carrying Elon Musk's electric red roadster into an orbit near that of Mars. Launch will take place during a three hour long launch window from 13:30-16:30 EST, on Tuesday Feb 6, from Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
When Falcon Heavy lifts off, it will be the most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two.
As promised in a tweet in December, the payload will be the Tesla Roadster, but it will be playing “Life on Mars” by David Bowie, perhaps in addition to “Space Oddity” and “Starman”.
Here is an awesome new animation of the Falcon Heavy flight — set to the music “Life on Mars” by David Bowie with a very creative and emotional ending -
Why the Red Roadster as payload?
Elon Musk explained on Instagram -
Test flights of new rockets usually contain mass simulators in the form of concrete or steel blocks. That seemed extremely boring.
Of course, anything boring is terrible, especially companies, so we decided to send something unusual, something that made us feel.
The payload will be an original Tesla Roadster, playing Space Oddity, on a billion year elliptic Mars orbit.
He also tweeted -
I love the thought of a car drifting apparently endlessly through space and perhaps being discovered by an alien race millions of years in the future.
In short, this is a test of a rocket system, not a science mission for a spacecraft in some useful orbit. Instead of using a concrete or steel block as a dummy payload, SpaceX will use a Tesla car and a dummy astronaut ;)
Is the roadster really going to Mars?
Not really. The payload will be inserted in a precessing Earth-Mars elliptical orbit around the sun; a low energy Hohmann transfer orbit, which in a few years will take the roadster near Mars orbit, but not close to Mars itself. The car might remain in orbit for a billion years.
There will be no rocket engines or thrusters to guide the payload, make orbital corrections or insert into Mars orbit. There will be no solar panels or comm. equipment to communicate back with Earth.
Rocket Recovery
The plan is to land and recover the first and second stage boosters and the payload fairings too. This is part of the overall goal of making rocket parts reusable and bringing down costs even further.
Two of the three first stage cores will return and land at the launch site; these two boosters have flown in an earlier mission; the 3rd will land on the drone-ship Of Course I Still Love You.
Mission Timeline
Video of the flight will go online half hour before launch at the following YouTube site and at www.spacex.com/...
A New Wrinkle
Instead of separating the car from the rocket’s third stage shortly after leaving Earth’s atmosphere, the third stage (and the car aboard it) will instead enter a six-hour “coast” through the Van Allen radiation belts.
Remarks
Here is how Elon Musk feels a day before the historic launch -
How do you feel?
References
- SpaceX set to debut Falcon Heavy in demonstration launch from KSC — www.nasaspaceflight.com/…
- Elon Musk's Red Roadster to be Launched towards Mars! — www.dailykos.com/…
- Falcon Heavy at Spacex — www.spacex.com/..