spacetoday.net: Falcon Heavy launches Space Force mission

Posted: Sat, Jan 21, 2023, 11:22 AM ET (1622 GMT)
Falcon Heavy launch of USSF-67 (SpaceX)

A Falcon Heavy launched the first US Space Force mission of the year Sunday evening. The Falcon Heavy lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 5:56 pm EST (2256 GMT) on the USSF-67 mission. The rocket's two side boosters landed back at Cape Canaveral while the center booster was expended. The Space Force declared the launch a success about six hours later. The primary payload was the US Space Force's Continuous Broadcast Augmenting SATCOM (CBAS)-2 communications satellite, used to relay data from existing satellites. The second spacecraft was the Long Duration Propulsive ESPA, or LDPE-3A, made by Northrop Grumman, a bus carrying five small military payloads. USSF-67 was the Space Force's first national security mission of 2023 and the second such mission for the Falcon Heavy, after USSF-44 two and a half months ago.