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SpaceX’s muscular Falcon Heavy rocket is about to fly for the first time in a year and a half, and you can watch the action live.
Falcon Heavy employs three modified and bonded first stages of SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. The central booster houses an upper stage, which is integrated with the payload.
Together, these three boosters generate about 5.1 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, making the Falcon Heavy the second most powerful launcher in operation today. The leader is NASA. Space launch system (SLS) lunar rocket, generating 8.8 million pounds. (SpaceX starship creates a whopping 16.7 million pounds of thrust at takeoff, but is still in development.)
Falcon Heavy debuted in February 2018 with a test flight launched by the founder of SpaceX Elon MuskThe cherry red Tesla Roadster in orbit around the sun. Since then, the rocket has carried out 10 more missions, all of them successful.
But it’s been a while since Falcon Heavy spit fire: last released in October 2024sending NASA Europe Clipper spacecraft towards the Jupiter system.
ViaSat-3 F3 won’t go that far. The 6.6-ton (6 metric ton) satellite is headed to geostationary orbit (GEO) which is located 35,786 kilometers (22,236 miles) above Earth. At that altitude, the orbital speed matches the rotation speed of our planet, allowing satellites to “float” over the same terrain continuously.
The ViaSat-3 F3 patch is important: the satellite will provide high-performance broadband service to customers across the Asia-Pacific region.
As its name suggests, ViaSat-3 F3 will be the third ViaSat-3 satellite to reach orbit. ViaSat-3 F1 did it aboard a Falcon Heavy in April 2023and ViaSat-3 F2 did the same in November 2025 aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V.
ViaSat-3 F1 currently serves customers on board airlines, and ViaSat-3 F2 will serve people in the Americas when it comes online next month. ViaSat-3 F3 will complete the ViaSat-3 mini-constellation.
“This launch marks a pivotal moment in our journey to deliver fast, secure, reliable, high-capacity and highly flexible broadband to our commercial, defense and consumer customers,” said Dave Abrahamian, vice president of space systems at ViaSat, in a statement. company statement earlier this month.
The Falcon Heavy’s two side boosters will return to land in Florida. Cape Canaveral Space Force Station about eight minutes after launch on Monday, if all goes according to plan. The central reinforcement will not be recovered; It will fall into the Atlantic Ocean when it finishes its work.
Meanwhile, the Falcon Heavy upper stage will carry the ViaSat-3 F3 to geosynchronous transfer orbit, deploying it there about five hours after launch.
