Entrepreneur Elon Musk made a bid to make space history on Tuesday evening.
ADVERTISEMENTIt was billed as one of the most significant — and eccentric — spaceflight moments in a generation.
Entrepreneur Elon Musk launched his bid to fly one of the world’s most powerful rockets from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday evening.
You can watch the launch again in the video player, below.
The 23-storey-tall Falcon Heavy rocket is made to have twice the lifting capacity of any other launch vehicle.
The rocket is only risking a dummy payload — Musk’s cherry red Tesla Roadster electric car — because of the high failure rate of maiden voyages.
“The Falcon Heavy, if successful, would become the world's biggest operational rocket, capable of carrying 26.7 metric tonnes to geostationary transfer orbit, and about 13 metric tonnes to Mars,” writes Euronews’ space correspondent Jeremy Wilks.
“The amount of mass matters. This rocket is a step towards the goal of sending humans and the support systems they need on missions to the moon and Mars. It isn't the biggest launcher ever - that crown remains with the Atlas V rocket of the Apollo era.”