Elon Musk shared a graphic on Twitter today to illustrate the flight path of the Falcon Heavy after launch. The 70-metre- (230-foot) long rocket's central core will then detach from the main module and begin its own controlled descent back to Earth, landing on the firm's 'Of Course I Still Love You' drone ship in the Pacific Ocean

After pushing back the launch time twice today due to wind speeds, Falcon Heavy was on track for its 3:45pm takeoff

SpaceX animation shows off Elon Musk's roadster on journey to Mars

SpaceX's Falcon Heavy megarocket lifted off from the Cape Canaveral launchpad today, in what was the firm's most ambitious launch yet. The megarocket can be seen sitting on Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida ahead of its demonstration mission

While the Falcon Heavy won't surpass NASA's Saturn V moon rocket, still all-time king of the launch circuit. It won't even approach the liftoff might of NASA's space shuttles. But when it departed on its first test flight, the Heavy with its two boosters and 27 engines still became the most powerful working rocket out there today, by a factor of two.

'I can't wait to see it fly and to see it fly again and again,' said the Southwest Research Institute's Alan Stern, ahead of the launch. He's the lead scientist for Nasa's New Horizons spacecraft which made an unprecedented flyby of Pluto and is now headed to an even smaller, icy world on the fringes of the solar system.

Cape Canaveral hasn't seen this kind of rocket mania since the last space shuttle flight in 2011.  

The Heavy is capable of delivering, in one fell swoop, 140,660 pounds (63,800 kilograms) of cargo to low-Earth orbit, nearly 60,000 pounds (26,700 kilograms) to high-Earth orbit, 37,000 pounds (16,800 kilograms) to Mars, or 7,700 pounds (3,500 kilograms) to Pluto. 

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