The world's most powerful rocket, SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, roared into space through clear blue skies in its debut test flight on Tuesday from a Florida launch site where moon missions once began, in another milestone for billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk's private rocket company.
The 23-story-tall jumbo rocket, carrying a cherry red Tesla Roadster automobile into space as a mock payload, thundered off its launchpad in billowing clouds of steam and rocket exhaust at 3:45 p.m (2045 GMT) at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.
Boisterous cheering could be heard from SpaceX workers at the company's headquarters in Hawthorne, California,