Following the recent launch of the Atlas V rocket at the Kennedy Space Center, SpaceX will be launching the Falcon Heavy spaceship from the Kennedy Space Center on June 25 at a proposed time of 5:16 PM, if conditions prevail. The Falcon Heavy, created by SpaceX, is one of the world’s most powerful rockets. Space X designed the Falcon Heavy to bring humans into space, past the Low Earth orbit zone. The Low Earth orbit zone, an area of under 1,200 miles, has only had some Apollo human missions move beyond it, but most orbits stay close to ensure a practical form of exploration. Despite this initial plan, Space X currently uses the spacecraft for cargo, and for this upcoming launch, it will be transporting the fourth GOES-U satellite.
Space X describes the Falcon Heavy as a reusable spaceship that contains “three reusable Falcon 9 nine-engine cores” that generate enough power to lift 141,000 lbs into space. This design is an advanced model of the Falcon 9 rocket, one SpaceX designed in 2008, and interestingly enough, was self funded for 500 million. The goal of this launch is to carry the Geostationary Environmental Satellite, which was planned for 2021 when NASA provided the geostationary GOES-U weather satellite.
I am excited for this launch to go up because with the Falcon Heavy, NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, are working together to collect data on the correlation between what the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites says is “atmospheric conditions and solar activity.” This will advance the research being done to understand our climate and predict our weather.
By Riley McManus
In Orbit 