SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy to fly again, but a little later than hoped

The powerful triple-booster rocket has flown 11 times to date.

By Trevor Mogg Published October 28, 2025

The Falcon Heavy rocket on the launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. — The Falcon Heavy rocket on the launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida during an earlier mission. SpaceX

SpaceX’s triple-booster Falcon Heavy rocket was on track to launch before the end of this year, but the team behind the mission’s payload said on Tuesday that the flight has been pushed to July 2026 at the earliest.

Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic explained that while Griffin-1 lunar mission preparations are making good progress, work continues on engine qualification testing and system readiness, with the team confirming next summer as the next viable launch window.

Recommended Videos

The mission, when it gets underway, will carry NASA and commercial payloads that include Astrobotic’s CubeRover and Astrolab’s FLIP rover in an ambitious endeavor aimed at demonstrating precision landing and advanced lunar infrastructure.

Griffin-1 is particularly important for Astrobotic as it will mark its second try at reaching the lunar surface following its failed Peregrine Mission One mission in early 2024 when a propellant leak shortly after launch ruined its flight.

Falcon Heavy

Creating just over five million pounds of thrust at launch, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy is one of the most powerful rockets in routine operational use today (SpaceX’s Starship, which is still being tested, creates a record-breaking 17 million pounds of thrust).

The vehicle comprises three Falcon 9 boosters, the workhorse rocket that’s launched on a regular basis by SpaceX for various missions that include ongoing deployments of its Starlink internet satellites.

The Falcon Heavy has flown 11 times since its inaugural flight in 2018, and is used when missions involve factors such as heavier payloads, larger satellites, or higher orbital deployments.

The rocket’s most recent launch took place from the Kennedy Space Center in October 2024 when it sent the Europa Clipper on its way to study Europa, one of Jupiter’s many moons. The spacecraft recently passed Mars as it continues its journey to Jupiter.

When possible, Falcon Heavy missions bring home the two side boosters shortly after launch, in the same way that SpaceX lands its Falcon 9 booster upright in its regular solo missions. This allows the boosters to be reused for multiple flights, saving on launch costs.

The Heavy’s core booster, which flies further than the two side boosters, is often expended.

SpaceX’s long-term plan is to retire the Falcon Heavy and Falcon 9 in favor of the next-gen Starship, though the transition is likely to be gradual while the new rocket confirms its reliability.

Contributing Editor

Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…

Topics

Space

Lightsails have hit another speed bump on the road to interstellar travel

The coolest interstellar travel idea may get betrayed by the light pushing it

LightSail in Earth orbit

Laser-powered lightsails are one of the coolest answers to spaceflight. It might not be as sci-fi-sounding as a warp drive, but now, its practicality has also come under question. Using lightsails, a spacecraft could unfurl an ultra-thin reflective sail and let a powerful laser push it toward another star, without relying on fuel.

The tech was simple and elegant--except it's also more complicated than it sounds. A new preprint from researchers Chao Shen and Jiaze Li of the Harbin Institute of Technology suggests that relativistic lightsails may run into a hidden propulsion problem once they start moving extremely fast.

Space

The galaxy has an exoplanet size mystery, and NASA’s EVE mission wants to solve it

This planet-hunting mission wants to catch baby worlds before they grow up

Artist’s Illustration of Exoplanets Orbiting Barnard’s Star

Mankind venturing into space ended up creating more questions than it answered, and one of the dilemmas is related to the planet sizes. Astronomers have found plenty of rocky super-Earths and plenty of puffier sub-Neptunes, but far fewer planets with a radius of about 1.8 times Earth’s.

That gap is known as the radius valley, and a proposed mission called the Early eVolution Explorer, or EVE, wants to figure out why it exists. NASA has a simple plan: look at planets while they are still young. The mission concept, detailed in a new arXiv preprint and covered by Phys.org, would focus on newly formed star clusters to see what small planets look like before billions of years of evolution.

Cars

We just got a hot signal that a Tesla and SpaceX merger could happen, after all

Tesla

For years, the idea of Tesla and SpaceX becoming a single company has lived somewhere between ambitious business theory and Elon Musk fan fiction. The two companies already share DNA, leadership influence, engineering talent, and long-term goals. But every time the topic surfaced, it felt more like an interesting thought experiment than a realistic possibility. Now, one of the most important people at SpaceX has added fresh fuel to the conversation.

Speaking in a recent CNBC interview, SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell was asked about the possibility of closer ties between Tesla and SpaceX. Her response wasn’t a flat-out denial. In fact, she suggested that bringing the two companies together could make life a little easier for Musk. That may sound like an offhand comment, but coming from Shotwell, it’s noteworthy. She’s been at SpaceX since its earliest days and remains one of the company's most influential executives.