Spacex Falcon Heavy

Falcon Heavy is a three-core orbital launch vehicle that combines a central booster with two side boosters, each equivalent to a Falcon 9 first stage. Total first-stage thrust comes from 27 Merlin 1D engines (nine per core); the second stage uses a single Merlin 1D Vacuum engine. Propellants are RP-1/LOX across all stages. The vehicle shares the 5.2 m diameter fairing with Falcon 9.^[1] Payload to LEO is 63,800 kg expended or 50,000 kg with all cores recovered.^[1] Payload to GTO is 26,700 kg expended or 16,800 kg with side boosters recovered.^[1] Side-booster recovery is routine; centre-core recovery is mission-dependent.^[2] Maiden flight was 2018-02-06; first operational payload flight was 2019-04-11.^[2] The vehicle is currently active.^[1] EO-relevant launches include the COSMIC-2 constellation (2019, GNSS radio occultation for meteorology and ionospheric sensing) and STP-2 (2019, a DoD technology demonstration mission).^[2]