Today Space X launched the "Falcon Heavy" launch vehicle. It's the biggest rocket to launch from the Kennedy Space Center since the Apollo moon shots. Space X was founded by Elon Musk, who also founded Tesla (The car company, not the band) and he recently sold oodles of flame throwers on the internet.
Falcon Heavy is designed to get us into high Earth orbit, to the moon and eventually Mars. Today's launch will send it's payload into a looooong orbit around the Sun and out as far as the orbit of Mars.
The payload? Elon Musk's Tesla roadster. And sitting in the roadster is a mannequin wearing the new space suits designed for Space X's Dragon spacecraft!
It's worth it to watch the entire video, because all three of the Falcon 9 rockets that are combined to make Falcon Heavy are reusable. Unlike the old days where the boosters would burn up in the atmosphere, or plummet back into the sea to lost forever, the three booster cores of Falcon Heavy actually land upright on either a landing pad back at the cape, or out at sea on a landing barge.
The REALLY cool thing about this video of today's launch? The two side boosters successfully landed back at the Space Center AT THE SAME TIME!
Check out the launch and return here...