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After months of delays, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket is ready for its maiden flight early this afternoon.
Plans call for the gigantic booster, which one day could take astronauts to the moon and Mars, to blast off from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida between 1:30 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time.
The weather appears to be cooperating, with current forecasts showing an 80 percent chance of favorable conditions.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said he felt “quite giddy” about the launch. “What I find strange about this flight is normally I feel super stressed out the day before,” he told reporters in a press briefing held Monday, Feb. 5. “This time I don’t.”
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The Falcon Heavy is essentially a supersized version of SpaceX’s standard Falcon 9 rocket, which has been ferrying cargo to the International Space Station since 2012. But instead of one central booster, there are three — and three times the thrust of the Falcon 9.
The rocket weighs more than 3.1 million pounds and stands almost 230 feet high. It’s designed to carry up to 140,000 pounds to low-Earth orbit, or more than 37,000 pounds all the way to Mars.