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SpaceX’s next Falcon Heavy launch slips into 2021
SpaceX’s next Falcon Heavy launch – set to be the rocket’s fourth overall – has slipped several months into 2021 according to the vice commander of the US Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (USAF SMC).
Known as AFSPC-44 (now USSF-44), the nature of Falcon Heavy’s next payload remains a mystery. Headed to geostationary orbit, the satellite will likely be involved in military satellite communications, possibly including espionage (also known as signals intelligence or SIGINT). Technically, the USSF-44 mission includes two separate satellites and at least two additional rideshare payloads and will weigh roughly 3.7 metric tons (~8200 lb) at launch.
When the contract was announced, Falcon Heavy was expected to launch USSF-44 no earlier than (NET) Q4 2020. By April 2020, that target was closer to late November or December. Now, four months after that report, Brigadier General Jason Cothern says that SpaceX’s next Falcon Heavy launch is scheduled NET February 28th, 2021.
The delay doesn’t come as much of a surprise. Based on public observation of SpaceX’s Falcon booster production and testing, requiring thousands of miles of extremely conspicuous highway transport, it was already clear that the mission was unlikely to launch this year. Of the six first stages spotted in transport over the last nine months, all were clearly Falcon 9 boosters and lacked any of the telltale parts that distinguish Falcon Heavy side and center boosters.
The most recent ‘core spottings’ – a new Falcon 9 booster headed West after acceptance testing and another preparing for acceptance testing in Texas late last month – all but confirmed that USSF-44 was significantly delayed. Since mid-2019, SpaceX has intentionally slowed down Falcon booster production to focus on the higher-volume production of expendable hardware (fairings and second stages). While the company could technically complete boosters every two weeks if its feet were put to the coals and has generally averaged 10 per year, that figure has dropped closer to 6-8 boosters per year over the last ~18 months.
Coupled with a report that all three of the USSF-44 Falcon Heavy rocket’s boosters would be brand new, the lack of sightings in the wild implied that has yet to ship even one of those complex rockets to McGregor, Texas for acceptance testing. Based on preparations for Falcon Heavy’s April 2019 Block 5 launch debut, the process of testing three new Falcon boosters singlehandedly takes at least three months. Additionally, all three of the Arabsat 6A mission’s new Falcon Heavy boosters arrived in Florida a full two months before launch.
In other words, given that a brand new Falcon 9 booster rolled out of SpaceX’s Hawthorne, CA factory on August 24th and that said factory isn’t really set up for concurrent booster completion, it would take unprecedented feats of manufacturing and testing for Falcon Heavy Flight 4 to be ready to launch less than four months from now (around the turn of the New Year).
In fact, even under the assumption that the next three boosters on SpaceX’s factory assembly line are all for Falcon Heavy Flight 4, the new February 2021 launch date is going to be a tight deadline. There is no evidence that SpaceX production delays are to blame for the USSF-44 launch delay and the coronavirus-related disruption of satellite production is equally – if not more – likely. Either way, SpaceX’s fourth Falcon Heavy launch will have to wait a few extra months. Barring a surprise mission over the next six months, Falcon Heavy Flight 4 will also be SpaceX’s first operational launch directly to geostationary orbit (GEO).
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SpaceX just picked up another $1.6 billion from the Pentagon, with the U.S. Space Force awarding two task orders worth $1.6 billion to fly 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California through the end of 2027. The launches will carry satellites for the Space Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio, a set of programs meant to help the military detect and track airborne threats and relay that information across forces in near real time.
The award falls under National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1, the Space Force’s faster, commercial style procurement track for missions that do not require the military’s most demanding certification process. It is also the largest single order publicly disclosed under that program so far, and the first task order issued since the Space Force nearly tripled Lane 1’s contract ceiling from $5.6 billion to $17 billion on July 17.
SpaceX to become America’s Military data backbone for missiles, drones, and warfighters
Eric Zarybnisky, the Space Force’s acting portfolio acquisition executive for space access, said the entire process, from identifying the requirement to signing the contract, took about two months, including a month set aside for companies to prepare proposals.
SpaceX is not just launching these satellites. It already holds the contracts to build two of the programs within the same portfolio, $4.16 billion for the Space Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator system and $2.29 billion for the Space Data Network Backbone, which Teslarati covered in May. That means SpaceX is now responsible for both building key pieces of the military’s next generation sensing network and getting them into orbit.
With this latest award, SpaceX’s Pentagon contract total for 2026 alone tops $8 billion, adding to a defense portfolio that already includes the Golden Dome missile defense software group SpaceX joined in April and a string of GPS launches it inherited after ULA’s Vulcan rocket ran into a booster anomaly, which we detailed in March.
Lane 1’s vendor pool technically includes seven companies: SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Impulse Space, and Relativity Space. In practice, SpaceX remains the only provider with the combination of launch cadence, flight proven Falcon 9 hardware, and West Coast infrastructure to support a campaign requiring roughly one Vandenberg launch a month for the next year and a half.
Some lawmakers have flagged the growing concentration of national security launches with one company as a risk worth watching. For now, the Space Force keeps backing SpaceX, with it being the company that shows up ready to launch.
Elon Musk shed two new bits of detail on Starship following its 13th test launch, which was an overwhelming success.
SpaceX launched Starship for the 13th time last Friday after two delays: one on Monday when several Raptor engines did not ignite, and another on Thursday due to unfavorable weather conditions in Starbase, Texas.
The launch was overwhelmingly successful. SpaceX was able to complete a necessary test of the heat shield tiles by increasing the acceleration of Starship from launch throughout the flight; 20 Starlink v3 satellites were released with no issue; the Super Heavy Booster landed safely in the Gulf of America, Ship successfully reignited engines while in space; and it also splashed down without incident in the Indian Ocean.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
Nevertheless, more details are coming out about Starship, and Musk is doing the talking.
Starship Will Be Retrieved in the Ocean
Musk revealed on Tuesday night that Starship would be recovered by a ship in the Indian Ocean. SpaceX routinely tries to recover Starship after splashdown in an effort to find out more about the flight by examining the spacecraft afterward.
We’re sending a ship out to recover Starship https://t.co/fUqUZTITO9
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 28, 2026
This helps engineers find out more about why things might have happened, allows them to examine any potential damage or anomalies that might have occurred, and increases the chances of an even more successful flight next time thanks to the additional information recovered.
Ship Could Have Been Caught by Tower Arms, Musk claims
Musk has already indicated that SpaceX will plan to attempt a catch of Starship with the 14th test flight. While this would be a major accomplishment, it would be an expected next step, considering the fact that the Super Heavy Booster has already been caught by the chopsticks on numerous occasions.
The ship landing was precise, meaning that it would have been caught by the tower arms https://t.co/6nbNrRfX9P
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 29, 2026
A ship catch would be a great indication of where SpaceX stands in terms of reusability and launch cadence. A successful catch with relatively no incidents would be a good sign that SpaceX is nearing a more frequent launch of Starship, but also that the reusability of the massive rocket would be something many would expect in the near future.
It is a necessity to make life multiplanetary.
Elon Musk has updated his timeline for when humans will walk on Mars and for when ships will simply get there.
The objective of getting to Mars has been one of Musk’s biggest goals since becoming a serial entrepreneur and realizing that time on Earth is limited. Musk has said several times he hopes to die on Mars, and not by impact.
Musk now believes that people will be on Mars in “roughly 5 to 7 years.” He said that a Mars lander will get there “a few years sooner.”
People on Mars in roughly 5 to 7 years.
Mars lander a few years sooner.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 29, 2026
The response from Musk comes after NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said that SpaceX’s biggest priority is the Moon and not Mars. Because of this, Isaacman conceded that he believes nuclear power and propulsion investments will provide “potentially the pathway with the fewest miracles required to put four people on Mars in the next 10 to 15 years.”
Of course, this is what NASA can do through taxpayer funding and nuclear investments, he added.
Musk’s grand ambitions are much more optimistic than most, and it is certainly a double-edged sword. This is not the first time timelines for Mars have been somewhat lofty, especially to those normal thinkers like you and me, not super geniuses like Musk.
In fact, the SpaceX and Tesla frontman has said on at least a dozen occasions that we could be on Mars in the coming years. Musk said 2020 would be the big year as early as 2009. In 2020, he was “highly confident” of a landing in 2026, and had even said 2024 in a best-case scenario.
The point is, the range has varied, and it’s anyone’s guess when we’ll get there. This latest adjustment to the timeline is typical of Musk, and while the Moon has seemingly taken priority over Mars, it is still worth mentioning that the ultimate goal is to make life multiplanetary, and it starts potentially with the Red Planet.
SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites
Elon Musk sheds two new bits of detail on Starship after 13th test launch
