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Yesterday, SpaceX鈥檚 Falcon Heavy rocket聽lifted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida for the first time. At 70 metres tall and with 3 boosters containing 27 engines, the Falcon Heavy is the most powerful rocket on the market.

This first flight was a test flight, designed primarily to demonstrate that the rocket can carry a payload into space without exploding. While test payloads are usually something like a block of concrete, just meant to add weight to the spacecraft, Elon Musk chose to send up his red Tesla Roadster, with a dummy named Starman at the wheel.

The launch went off without a hitch on its first try, delayed only by a few hours because of winds high up in the atmosphere. After two side boosters disconnected from the rest of the rocket, they started to head back down to Earth. Moments later, the third booster did the same.

The first two boosters landed almost simultaneously on their launch pads. But the third booster didn鈥檛 touch down so gently. When it was executing the engine burn necessary to bring it back to rest on a drone ship, it was only able to light one of the three engines it needed to land.

So instead of landing, the centre booster hurtled back down to Earth and splashed down at a speed of nearly 500 kilometres per hour, destroying two engines on the drone ship as it crashed. 鈥淸It] was enough to take out two thrusters and shower the deck with shrapnel,鈥� Musk said in a press conference yesterday.

Even though the landing sequence didn鈥檛 go exactly as planned, all was well with the upper stages. In the hours following the launch, Starman and his car hurtled through the Van Allen belts, zones of intense radiation that surround Earth, and flew toward Mars. It was meant to enter an orbit around the sun which would take it to the distance of Mars鈥� orbit.

But it聽actually ended up聽on an orbit that will take it past Mars and into the asteroid belt, passing between the paths of Mars and Jupiter about 390 million kilometres from the sun. Such a distant orbit proves that the Falcon Heavy can bring payloads to Mars and beyond, travelling deep into the solar system without a hitch.