SpaceX's biggest rocket launched with a sports car on top

New Delhi : SpaceX's biggest rocket - Falcon Heavy - successfully soared towards Mars with a sports car on top of it.

Falcon Heavy was launched from the same launch pad used by NASA nearly 50 years ago to send men to the moon. The pad that hoisted men to the Moon almost 50 years ago underwent modifications by SpaceX to adapt it to the needs of its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets.

With the launch it has become world's most powerful rocket in use till today.

The Falcon Heavy is a reusable super heavy-lift launch vehicle.

Its first stage is composed of three Falcon 9 nine-engine cores whose 27 Merlin engines together generate more than 5 million pounds (2.3 million kg) of thrust at liftoff, equal to about eighteen 747 aircraft.

Only the Saturn V moon rocket, last flown in 1973, delivered more payload to orbit.

Falcon Heavy was designed from the outset to carry humans into space and restores the possibility of flying missions with crew to the Moon or Mars, according to SpaceX.

On the eve of the flight, Musk told reporters the company had done all it could to maximize success and he was at peace with whatever happens: success, “one big boom” or some other calamity. The longer the flight, he noted, the more the company would learn from the heavily instrumented rocket.