![\"a](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/tngnP2iAQCUanhkNs6rAXa.jpg\")
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One of BlackSky’s Gen-3 Earth-observing satellites captured this photo of a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket launching on April 29, 2026. (Image credit: BlackSky)<\/p>\n
SpaceX’s powerful Falcon Heavy rocket flew for the first time in 18 months on Wednesday (April 29), and a sharp-eyed satellite was watching.<\/p>\n
The Falcon Heavy<\/a> launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center<\/a> (KSC) in Florida, carrying the ViaSat-3 F3 communications satellite to geosynchronous transfer orbit.<\/p>\n One of BlackSky’s Gen-3 Earth-observing spacecraft chronicled the liftoff, snapping a stunning shot of the powerful rocket on the pad and another one showing it climbing in the cloudy Florida skies.<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n \n A BlackSky Gen-3 satellite captured this photo of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket on the pad at Kennedy Space Center on April 29, 2026. (Image credit: BlackSky)<\/p>\n “At 07:29 local time, Gen-3 captured an extreme off-nadir twilight shot of a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket on the pad before again catching the vehicle in flight at 10:13, 38 seconds after launch, as it was traveling more than 400 miles per hour,” BlackSky wrote in a Wednesday X post<\/a> that shared the images. “With time-diverse imaging capabilities and flexible imaging modes, Gen-3 sees relevant activity at all hours of the day.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n BlackSky is building out its Gen-3 constellation in low Earth orbit<\/a>, having launched four of the spacecraft to date. The satellites are capable of resolving features as small as 13.8 inches (35 centimeters) on the ground below, according to BlackSky<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Falcon Heavy is the second-most-powerful launcher in operation today, trailing only NASA’s Space Launch System<\/a> moon rocket. (SpaceX’s Starship<\/a> is far more powerful than either of them, but it’s still in the development stage.)<\/p>\n Falcon Heavy debuted in February 2018 and now has 12 flights under its belt, all of them successful. Wednesday’s launch was the first for the rocket since October 2024<\/a>, when it sent NASA’s Europa Clipper<\/a> spacecraft to the Jupiter system.<\/p>\n\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of BlackSky’s Gen-3 Earth-observing satellites captured this photo of a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket launching on April…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-405371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}