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SpaceX has completed the first static fire test of the Falcon Heavy’s center core, bringing the ‘world’s most powerful rocket’ a step closer to its maiden launch.
The firm has teased the megarocket since 2013, but after several delays, CEO Elon Musk said earlier this year that it will finally be ready for lift-off late this summer.
New footage shared on Twitter suggests SpaceX is now on track for the debut of its highly-anticipated rocket, which will launch with the thrust of eighteen 747 aircraft.
‘First static fire test of a Falcon Heavy center core completed at our McGregor, TX rocket development facility last week,’ SpaceX tweeted.
The 18-second clip shows billows of white and black smoke pouring out from below.
When completed, the Falcon Heavy will be equipped with three cores, making for a total of 27 Merlin engines to generate 5.13 million pounds of thrust at lift-off.
According to SpaceX, it will be able to carry more than 140,000 pounds of payload to low-Earth orbit, making it the ‘most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two.’
The Falcon Heavy rocket was originally slated to fly in 2013, but faced several challenges that forced the firm to push back the date of its debut.
Now, it’s expected to fly late this summer, Musk said in a conference following the successful launch of a re-used Falcon 9 rocket in March, revealing the difficulties they’d faced along the way.
‘At first it sounded easy. We'll just take two first stages and use them as strap-on boosters,’ Musk said.
'It was actually shockingly difficult to go from single core to a triple-core vehicle.'
Earlier this year, Musk revealed SpaceX will send two private paying customers beyond the moon in 2018.
The mission will use one of SpaceX's Dragon capsules, which will be modified to allow communications in deep space, launched atop a Falcon Heavy rocket.
Previously, Elon Musk had said he was ‘planning to send Dragon to Mars as soon as 2018.’
But, the firm later admitted it won’t make that date, and is instead aiming for 2020.
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell revealed the timeline at a press briefing for the company's recent launch from NASA's historic launch pad 39A.
'We were focused on 2018, but we felt like we needed to put more resources and focus more heavily on our crew program and our Falcon Heavy program,' she said.
'So we're looking more in the 2020 timeframe for that.'
Red Dragon is a precursor for SpaceX's ambitious Mars plans, which company founder Elon Musk unveiled at the International Astronautical Congress in Mexico in September.
