Tuesday, February 6, 2018

SpaceX Sends Tesla Roadster Towards Mars, Lands Boosters

Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX successfully sent a cherry Red Tesla Roadster--complete with dummy spaceman--well on its way towards Mars, in its first test flight of the Falcon Heavy--the world's largest rocket since the Saturn V. In a perfectly coordinated landing, two of the Falcon boosters successfully returned to Earth in Florida, with a third last seen about to land on the SpaceX drone ship. SpaceX lifted the Falcon Heavy from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 3:45PM ET. The SpaceX launch--with heavy nods to David Bowie and the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy--did not have a commercial payload, in that it was the very first test flight for the new SpaceX rocket. The Tesla Roadster--owned by Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of SpaceX--included the words "Don't Panic" on the dashboard, a reference to the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy sci-fi series by Douglas Adams.