SpaceX is planning to launch its huge novel Falcon Heavy roquette by the oddment of the year , which will be the humankind ’s most powerful rocket engine in process today .

Although Elon Musk ’s party has n’t made a formal announcement yet , NASASpaceflight.comreports that the company is preparing for a launch particular date of no earlier than Friday , December 29 .

This would crest a wildly successful class for the troupe , which has alreadydoubled its recordfor launching in a unmarried class by sending 16 rockets to space . Thirteen of those have included landings   of the Falcon 9 ’s first stagecoach .

The company has three other launches plan this year . One is a mysterious launch on November 16 that has been codenamed Zuma . The others are a Dragon cargo flight to the International Space Station ( ISS ) on December 4 , and an Iridium satellite launch on December 22 .

If these launching and the Falcon Heavy take place , the company will have an telling aggregate of 20 rocket flight for 2017 . It has not yet been announced what the Falcon Heavy will take to space , but it ’s probable to include a clapper - in - cheek payload ; the company included awheel of cheeseon its first flight of the Dragon capsule in 2010 , a reference to Monty Python .

The plan is to launch it from Launch Complex 39A ( LC-39A ) at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida , follow therefurbishment of a second pad – LC-40 – that can be used by Falcon 9 in case the Falcon Heavy launch is a unsuccessful person .

Musk has previously noted the inaugural launch of Falcon Heavy isrisky , saying that the development of the rocket has proved to be more complex than opinion .

The Falcon Heavy is essentially three Falcon 9 booster unit strap together , stacked to a height of 70 measure ( 230 foot ) . It will be capable of hire 63,800 kilograms ( 140,700 quid ) to low Earth orbit , more than double the most sinewy rocket presently in surgery , the Delta IV Heavy ( 28,790 kilograms or 63,470 pounds to low Earth ambit ) .

This will not make it the most powerful Eruca sativa of all time , though . That accolade still belongs to the Saturn V rocket used to take cosmonaut to the Moon , which could lift 140,000 kilograms ( 310,000 pound ) to moo Earth domain .

But launch the Falcon Heavy will be a Brobdingnagian blessing for SpaceX , which has longkept its fans waitingfor the first launching of this huge rocket . The company has been get laid to miss targets before , though , so whether they ’ll make the launch particular date of December 29 remains to be seen .

Even if that slip , though , one would desire the inaugural launch is not too far out .