SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy launches NOAA weather satellite
SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket today successfully launched a NOAA weather satellite, completing its first flight in 2024 and its tenth flight overall.
The two side boosters completed their first flight, with both landing back at Cape Canaveral. The core stage was allowed to fall into the ocean.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
67 SpaceX
28 China
8 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise now leads the world combined in successful launches, 78 to 42, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world, including other American companies, 67 to 53.
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SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket today successfully launched a NOAA weather satellite, completing its first flight in 2024 and its tenth flight overall.
The two side boosters completed their first flight, with both landing back at Cape Canaveral. The core stage was allowed to fall into the ocean.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
67 SpaceX
28 China
8 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise now leads the world combined in successful launches, 78 to 42, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world, including other American companies, 67 to 53.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuses to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
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5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
It’s amazing that a Falcon Heavy launch wasn’t even on my radar as something I should watch. Although I really do want to get to Florida to see one live.
Tim Dodd (The Everyday Astronaut) has posted his two part interview/tour of Star Factory and the Superheavy launch site taken the day before IFT-4. Part one (star factory): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFqjoCbZ4ik, part two (launch pad tour, and post-launch interview with Elon) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InJOlT6WdHc
The view from the pad looking up at the full stack is just amazing, the photos I’ve seen from remote sites just doesn’t capture the scale, not even close.
Cool video of GOES getting deployed. The background looks familiar.
https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1805782454495855078
@David The view of the launch vehicle from up close is even more surreal when as Tim pointed out, there is nothing to compare against for scale.
And the 3 boosters in the Mega Bay? More lift capacity there than probably half of all the Apollo launches.
Then the Raptor room with rows and rows of Raptors waiting to be mounted. SN’s in the 380’s…
I assume the upper stage will also have to remain in geo’ or can it deorbit?
NASA coverage of this launch, leaves something to be desired.
Jeff Wright asked: “I assume the upper stage will also have to remain in geo’ or can it deorbit?”
Upper stages do not circularize to GEO but remain in their Hohmann transfer orbits, and with very little effort they can be de-orbited. SpaceX has been de-orbiting their upper stages for many years.
”Upper stages do not circularize to GEO but remain in their Hohmann transfer orbits, and with very little effort they can be de-orbited. SpaceX has been de-orbiting their upper stages for many years.”
That is true for launches to LEO such as Starlink launches but not for launches like this. This launch left the upper stage in a 16,000 x 35,000 km orbit. It will be up there for thousands of years.