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SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy — a towering, three-pronged vehicle that is the most powerful operational rocket in the world — returned to the skies on Tuesday for the first time since mid-2019.
The rocket launched at 9:41 a.m. ET from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, hauling satellites to space for the US military in a secretive mission dubbed USSF-44.
The Falcon Heavy debuted in 2018 to much fanfare as SpaceX CEO Elon Musk elected to launch his personal Tesla Roadster as a test payload on the launch. The car is still in space, taking an oblong path around the sun that swings out as far as Mars’ orbital path.
Since that first test mission, SpaceX has launched…
