World News for Students of English

07-11-2022 07:00

On Tuesday, SpaceX launched the first Falcon Heavy mission in over three years. It was the first operational national security mission for Falcon Heavy; it originally scheduled for late 2020.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX continues to launch its Falcon series of rockets at a high rate, and the Tuesday’s mission was the company’s 50^th launch this year.

The rocket lifted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral through dense fog, and it sent a group of satellites into orbit. Tuesday’s mission was the first use of the rocket by the Space Force, a US military branch to oversee the US government’s defense activities in space.

Falcon Heavy is currently the most powerful operational rocket in the world, and since its first test mission in 2018, SpaceX has launched only two other Falcon Heavy missions. One sent a large TV and phone service to satellite to orbit for Saudi Arabia, and the other delivered experimental satellites for the US Department of Defense.

Difficult words: operational (relating to active operations of the army or police), defense (protection against attack), experimental (untested or not complete).

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