The SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket has been in the plans to launch for a long time. Now, the rocket is finally ready to reveal itself publicly and embark on its maiden journey. Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO confirmed on Sunday night that the long-anticipated maiden launch of the rocket will be on Tuesday, as was also announced one week ago.
“Falcon Heavy remains go for launch at 1:30pm on Tuesday,” Musk’s tweet reads.
At the time he posted his tweet, he referred to Florida time, which corresponds to the East Coast. If the maiden launch of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket is successful, it would become the world’s most powerful operational rocket. There have only been two rockets more powerful than the Falcon Heavy in history. The first is NASA’s Saturn V, while the second is the rocket from Soviet-era, Russian-built Energia.
That’s why the SpaceX Falcon Heavy has a great chance to successfully travel to our neighbor, the red planet, Mars.
Musk has had colonizing the Red Planet on his mind for years. Additionally, the Red Planet is the place where the controls of the Falcon Heavy are set for. During its test flight, the Falcon Heavy will carry the cherry-red Tesla Roadster, which belongs to Musk.
Before the Tuesday afternoon launch of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, Musk shared some concept art on his Instagram account. The concept art reveals tourism on Mars, followed by faux posters, which were created in retro-style. The posters display famous spots on Mars.
The first poster reveals a futuristic cable car, with a lone mountaineer who is climbing up Olympus Mons. The poster is captioned “The solar system’s highest peak.” However, that caption is not completely accurate, considering the volcanic mountain is the highest peak on any planet in the solar system. There is another higher peak, on an asteroid, in our solar system.
The second poster reveals the view from, apparently, Phobos, which is the larger of the two moons that orbit Mars. There are tourists on it looking at Mars in the foreground and the second moon, Deimos, located in the background in the upper right. In reality, Deimos is much further away compared to Phobos, plus the smaller size should make it appear much smaller in the poster.
The third poster reveals the view of the Martian version of the Grand Canyon. Valles Marineris is thought to be made by flowing lava that once flowed throughout the history of the planet’s existence. However, its 4,000 kilometer length is what makes it the longest formation of this type on a planet that’s not Earth. It’s worth mentioning that Venus is also known to have chasms of similar size.
There is also another photo that Musk shared on Instagram and it displays a “driver” which is seated behind the wheel of the Roadster.
