People witnessed the SpaceX’s launch of Falcon Heavy where the rocket was launched and the three boosters returned and landed back at Cape Canaveral. The reveal of the car, while it was about to leave Earth, has become an iconic image. But for those who are professional and amateur space watchers, the show will begin after the space car is ignited and burned in the space.
Before the car was launched, the hobby satellite trackers started bandying about the orbital inclinations that had a chance to occur and probable ground tracks for the Falcon Heavy’s payload stage. The keen watchers were hoping to track the rocket and see when Elon’s Tesla reaches its destination.
Marco Langbroek, an archaeologist and astronomer, was the one who took the lead to share data when it emerged. The information he gave helped many skywatchers to prepare for capturing images of the rocket as it left the earth’s surface and headed towards an orbit around the sun.
Okay, based on the tweets of @elonmusk and assuming insertion into heliocentric orbit in perigee after 2.0 revolutions (5.5. hrs coasting), I get this *approximate* ground track for #FalconHeavy . Times in GMT.
Note: the inclination is the largest uncertainty. pic.twitter.com/beljgpV3tW— Dr Marco Langbroek (@Marco_Langbroek) February 6, 2018
One of those skywatchers is Derek Breit who managed to take the best image and later posted it on his web page. Another one was taken by Thomas Ashcraft who has compressed an eight minutes video to five seconds.
the #spacex solar orbit insertion burn as seen from @mmtobservatory… pic.twitter.com/3KOHgOltiS
— Dr. T. E. Pickering ? (@te_pickering) February 7, 2018
Observatories all over the world were also ready to capture the moment. At the MMT Observatory in Arizona, the scientists aimed to capture the burn into deep space in the telescope and capture some really interesting time-lapse images. Some of those images were also caught by surprise as well. Brittney Brelle in Claremont, Calif, captured an image when she noticed some unusual activity in the sky.
Serendipitously caught the #FalconHeavy third burn! Didn’t believe it would be visible in SoCal. Moral of the story: always look up and follow the moving thing in the sky.. pic.twitter.com/dLPBnFUXn6
— Britt ? (@brittanybrelle) February 7, 2018