The world’s second most powerful rocket Falcon Heavy reappeared tonight

This is the 12th flight of Falcon Heavy, scheduled to begin at 10:21 a.m. on April 27 (9:21 p.m. on the same day Hanoi time) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA. The flight also marked the return of SpaceX’s heavy rocket after nearly a year and a half of absence, since the Europa Clipper mission in October 2024.

In this mission, Falcon Heavy carries ViaSat-3 F3 – a communications satellite weighing about 6.6 tons. The launch will be broadcast live on SpaceX media channels about 15 minutes before leaving the launch pad.

According to the scenario, about 8 minutes after leaving the launch pad, the Falcon Heavy’s two secondary thrusters will separate and return to land at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The central thruster stage, after completing the task of pushing the upper stage containing the satellite out of the atmosphere, will fall into the Atlantic Ocean. The rocket’s upper stage will continue its journey to bring ViaSat-3 F3 to a geostationary transfer orbit and separate the satellite after about five hours of flight.

Since its debut in February 2018 with the launch of Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster into space, Falcon Heavy has performed a total of 11 missions and all were successful.

This heavy rocket is made up of three improved Falcon 9 rocket cores joined together. This system possesses 27 Merlin engines, generating 5.1 million pounds (about 2,300 tons) of thrust when leaving the launch pad. With this parameter, Falcon Heavy is currently the second most powerful rocket in operation in the world, second only to NASA’s space launch system (SLS) with a thrust of 8.8 million pounds. SpaceX also introduced its most powerful system, Starship, with a thrust of 16.7 million pounds, but this rocket is still in the testing process and has not yet entered official operation.

ViaSat-3 F3 in this transit is an important piece in ViaSat’s satellite network, specializing in providing high-speed broadband Internet services to commercial, defense and consumer customers in the Asia-Pacific region.

The two previous satellites in this network, ViaSat-3 F1 launched by Falcon Heavy in April 2023, are serving passengers on flights; and ViaSat-3 F2 launched by Atlas V rocket in November 2025, expected to go into operation in the Americas next month.

During this flight, ViaSat-3 F3 will be placed in geostationary orbit (GEO), about 35,786 km from Earth. At this altitude, the satellite’s orbital speed matches the Earth’s rotation speed, helping it always “hover” in a fixed position to maintain continuous connection.