For the first time in history, the world closely followed on Tuesday SpaceX’s launch of its first rocket, Falcon Heavy, carrying the first Tesla Roadster car to Mars. Meanwhile, the rocket’s boosters successfully landed back on earth after sending the vessel into space.
In a livestream video, Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and Tesla, aired footage of the car which held a dummy astronaut in the driver seat with the message “Don’t Panic” to aliens on the dashboard.
“Apparently, there is a car in orbit around Earth,” Musk tweeted on the livestream of the car’s journey.
The rocket successfully separated two of its three rocket boosters and they landed in their in their planned locations on parallel launchpads near where they took off from in California. However, the third booster was not found after separating, as it did not land where it was meant to. Suggestions state that it drowned in the Atlantic Ocean.
Nevertheless, the launch is considered a huge step on the road to making cheaper and easier rockets for space, as prior to SpaceX, rocket boosters were usually discarded, despite being the most expensive part of a rocket.
Pictures showed the circuit board of the electric car imprinted with “Made on Earth by humans”.
According to The Guardian, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy is estimated to cost $90m per launch.
The rocket is considered the second most powerful rocket in operation since the Apollo era which took humans to the moon.
