What do you get when you take three Falcon 9 boosters and strap them together? Well, a Falcon Heavy of course. The second most powerful rocket (surpassed only by NASA’s Space Launch System), SpaceX doesn’t get to launch it often, but when they do, everyone wants to see it. The next Falcon Heavy launch is scheduled for no earlier than April 18, 2023, from LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center.
The next SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch is ViaSat-3
Differing from the last few Falcon Heavy missions, next’s week’s launch of our favorite Falcon variation is a communication satellite for ViaSat. The first of the company’s ViaSat-3 constellation, its proper name is ViaSat-3 Americas, and will support (you guessed it) most of the Americas.
Two payloads will be piggybacking on ViaSat’s mission, Aurora 4A from Arcturus and G-Space 1 by Gravity Space, a 16U cubesat with a couple of different payloads in one. All three will launch to a near-direct injection into geostationary orbit instead of the more traditional geostationary transfer orbit, a highly elliptical orbit. The latter requires the payloads to spend months circularizing their orbit and precious fuel. Direct injection allows the operator to bring the satellite operational quicker.
Because of this, we won’t see the duel side booster landings back at LZ-1 and 2 like usual. The energy needed to make this mission possible will require all three to be expended into the ocean. Check out more about what boosters SpaceX is using in our spotlight here.
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This will be SpaceX’s second Falcon Heavy of 2023 and the sixth for the rocket overall. More are still planned for this year, with missions from EchoStar and the Space Force still possible for the first half of the year. Then, of course, NASA’s Psyche mission as soon as October.
How to watch SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy launch
Like all previous SpaceX launches, we expect to see full coverage of the Falcon Heavy launch through the company’s YouTube channel. There will likely be two streams, one with a host and plenty of views of the rocket and another with launch control audio and a clean pad feed. We should see the mission control audio begin at least 40 minutes before the flight, but the hosted stream will most likely begin at T-15 minutes.
List of previous launches
| Mission Name | Launch Date | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Falcon Heavy Demo | February 6, 2018 | Launched Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster into a heliocentric orbit near Mars. Both side boosters landed successfully at LZ-1 and 2, but the center’s drone ship landing failed. |
| Arabsat-6A | April 11, 2019 | First Falcon Heavy to use Block 5 boosters, the side boosters landed successfully, but the center core’s drone ship landing failed again. |
| STP-2 | June 25, 2019 | The first night launch of the Falcon Heavy, launched a plethora of satellites into orbit, including Lightsail-2. The landing outcomes remained the same as in previous attempts. |
| USSF-44 | November 1, 2022 | Launch directly into geosynchronous orbit for the DoD. SpaceX did not attempt to recover the center core. |
| USSF-67 | January 15, 2023 | The first launch of the Phase 2 launch contract with the then US Air Force to support classified missions. |
| ViaSat-3 | May 1, 2023 | Similar to USSF-44, this mission delivered the payload directly into geosynchronous orbit, only recovering the fairings. |
| Jupiter-3 | July 29, 2023 | Heaviest and largest geostationary launched to date. Launched into GTO, allowing for booster recovery back on land. |
| Psyche | October 13, 2023 | NASA mission to the asteroid 16 Psyche, believed to be an entirely metal asteroid. |
| USSF-52 | December 29, 2023 | Fourth flight of the Air Force’s X-37B uncrewed, research spaceplane. |
No earlier than April 15, 2023, from LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center
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