Next Falcon Heavy to have double booster landing at sea

Both drone ships will be used to land boosters off shore in the Atlantic ocean for the next Falcon Heavy launch.

Launching no earlier than late 2020, most likely November or December, an April 21st update from small satellite manufacturer Millenium Space Systems confirmed that the next Falcon Heavy mission is still on track. Previously known as AFSPC-44, and now called U.S. Space Force 44 or USSF-44, SpaceX won the contract in part of a 297 million batch of three U.S. military launches in February of 2019.

Due to the apparent challenges of central core recovery, and the fact that Falcon Heavy doesn't launch as much as the Falcon 9, (three launches total now) none of the three custom, highly complex boosters have survived to be reused or inspected intact. Until the time whereas this can be fixed, SpaceX will have to assume that it must build a new center booster for every launch. This launch will be no different, as SpaceX is going to expend the center core again, and planning to recover both side boosters on the drone ships, " Of Course I Still Love You" and " Just Read The Instructions."

The U.S. Space Force is expecting to complete design validation on SpaceX's Falcon heavy rocket by July. This will be the first high priority national security mission on the heavy lifter late this year, and only the fourth ever launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket, currently the most powerful launcher by a factor of two in the world.