SpaceX’s brawny Falcon Heavy rocket is about to fly for the primary time in a yr and a half, and you’ll watch the motion reside.
Falcon Heavy employs three modified, strapped-together first phases of SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. The central booster hosts an higher stage, which is built-in with the payload.
Collectively, these three boosters generate about 5.1 million kilos of thrust at liftoff, making Falcon Heavy the second-most-powerful launcher in operation right now. The chief is NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) moon rocket, which generates 8.8 million pounds. (SpaceX’s Starship creates a whopping 16.7 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, but it’s still in development.)
Falcon Heavy debuted in February 2018 with a test flight that launched SpaceX founder Elon Musk‘s cherry-red Tesla Roadster into orbit around the sun. The rocket has since flown 10 more missions, every one of them successful.
But it’s been a while since Falcon Heavy breathed fire: It last launched in October 2024, sending NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft toward the Jupiter system.
ViaSat-3 F3 isn’t going nearly that far afield. The 6.6-ton (6 metric tons) satellite is headed to geostationary orbit (GEO) which lies 22,236 miles (35,786 kilometers) above Earth. At that altitude, orbital velocity matches our planet’s rotational speed, allowing satellites to “hover” over the same patch of real estate continuously.
ViaSat-3 F3’s patch is a big one: The satellite will provide high-throughput broadband service to customers throughout the Asia-Pacific region.
As its name suggests, ViaSat-3 F3 will be the third ViaSat-3 satellite to reach orbit. ViaSat-3 F1 did so atop a Falcon Heavy in April 2023, and ViaSat-3 F2 followed suit in November 2025 aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V.
ViaSat-3 F1 currently provides service to customers aboard airliners, and ViaSat-3 F2 will serve people in the Americas when it comes online next month. ViaSat-3 F3 will round out the ViaSat-3 mini-constellation.
“This launch marks a pivotal moment in our journey to bring fast, secure and reliable high capacity, highly flexible broadband to our commercial, defense and consumer customers,” Dave Abrahamian, ViaSat’s vice president of space systems, said in a company statement earlier this month.
The Falcon Heavy’s two aspect boosters will come again for a touchdown at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Area Power Station about eight minutes after launch on Monday, if all goes to plan. The central booster will not be recovered; it should fall into the Atlantic Ocean when its work is finished.
The Falcon Heavy’s higher stage, in the meantime, will carry ViaSat-3 F3 to geosynchronous switch orbit, deploying it there about 5 hours after launch.
