Elon Musk's SpaceX Teases Photo Of Falcon Heavy Rocket

Elon Musk's SpaceX released its first photo of actual hardware for its new Falcon Heavy Rocket via social media, showing the interstage that connects the first and second stages of the booster, including the vehicle's official logo.

A photo posted by SpaceX (@spacex) on Dec 28, 2016 at 12:33pm PST

The caption for the photo posted on Instagram read: "Falcon Heavy interstage being prepped at the rocket factory. When FH flies next year, it will be the most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two."

Of course, the new photo does not indicate any major announcement regarding its launch. But as Ars Technica reported, a company official said that SpaceX is targeting an "early-to-mid" 2017 launch, which will put it as the most powerful operational booster on the planet, considering that it has twice the capacity of the Delta IV heavy.

Still, the question remains: could the rocket be close enough to flying? The Falcon Heavy is pretty complex: its first stage is made of three Falcon 9 cores and has a combined 5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff. Because of this, critics are already expecting a failure in launch as some suggested that a booster that relies on 27 engines to work would have a hard time to launch. The Soviet N1 booster, for instance, used 30 engines in its first tstage and failed all four of its launches between 1969 and 1972.

Space Flight Insider also noted that SpaceX needs to return the Falcon 9 rocket to safe flight after being grounded since September due to a launch pad explosion. The company is still finalizing the investigation on its the failure, which was said to be focused on a breach in its helium system. An update on the website also noted that after extensive testing, the failure was due to the loading conditions that affected the temperature and pressure of the helium loaded onto the rocket.

SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said that the company hoped to launch again by the end of 2016. But due to finalization of the investigations, the launch was moved to January 2017 instead.