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SpaceX's Falcon Heavy Rocket Preps for Oct. 31 Launch After 3-Year Hiatus:

The biggest operational rocket in the world has a treat for us on Halloween: Falcon Heavy is set to launch that morning for the first time since 2019.

Not long after SpaceX's big triple rocket got off the ground for the first time in 2018, it seemed to get forgotten in the hype around Elon Musk's even bigger Starship rocket. Now ol' Heavy is ready to send a pair of payloads into orbit for the US Space Force.

Lately when we talk about a "big SpaceX rocket," we're probably referring to Starship and its companion Super Heavy booster, which NASA hopes will return astronauts to the moon and which Musk dreams of using to build a society on Mars.

But the most muscle in the SpaceX garage that's actually made it to space is still the Falcon Heavy. Its first flight sent a Tesla toward the red planet in 2018. It flew two more times, both in 2019.

[...] The Falcon Heavy mission dubbed USSF 44 is the next launch on deck for pad 39-A at Florida's Kennedy Space Center, currently set for Oct. 31 at 9:44 a.m. ET (6:44 a.m. PT). The Space Force describes it as a classified mission.

"There will be two payloads on board this mission -- a larger, unconfirmed satellite and a micro-satellite named TETRA-1," the military said in a statement on one of its YouTube Channels. "TETRA-1 is the first in a series of prototype GEO satellites launched by the US military, which will test systems procedures for future satellites."

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