Created 13-Apr-19
Modified 13-Dec-23
April 11, 2019: A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket launches from LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center, at 6:25p.m. EDT on its second flight. The heavy-lift rocket, composed of three Falcon 9 rocket cores with 27 Merlin engines firing, placed the Arabsat 6A communications satellite in orbit.
The side boosters successfully landed at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station around 8 minutes after liftoff, and the Falcon Heavy’s center core landed on SpaceX’s drone ship stationed several hundred miles offshore in the Atlantic Ocean.
Note: Last three images show the bottom half of the center core returning to port aboard the drone ship 7 days after launch. In heavy seas, the booster toppled over and the top half was cut off to save the engines housed in the lower portion.
Launch photos taken from the Saturn 5 Center - a distance of about 4 miles, while the landing was about 11 miles away.
© Dennis Huff
