KENNEDY SPACE CENTER — The Space Coast enjoyed a rare launch of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket this morning on a mission for NASA that  also featured the double sonic booms of its returning first-stage boosters.

Flying for only the eighth time ever, and its first ever launch for NASA, the Falcon Heavy, which is essentially three Falcon 9 boosters strapped together, avoided weather concerns for a 10:19 a.m. liftoff from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39-A.

Teams polled go to begin propellant load of the three boosters with about one hour ahead of liftoff and load began with 50 minutes to go.

“The team is working no issues at this time and all systems have checked out nominally up to this point,” said NASA commentators. “They really wanted to be sure that the weather was good, and the range was good before they start tanking.”

Two of the three boosters came back for a recovery landing at neighboring Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Landing Zone 1 and 2, and with it the signature sonic booms on reentry that could be heard and felt along the Space Coast and surrounding counties. At the launch site, the double booms set off car alarms and bounced off the massive Vehicle Assembly Building making an eerie whistling sound that was reminiscent of bottle rockets.

Long wait nearly over for Psyche asteroid probe’s Space Coast launch

The payload is NASA’s Psyche probe on a six-year, 2.5-billion-mile trip to the asteroid also named Psyche, what scientists think is a rare metal-rich asteroid that could reveal answers to about how planets were formed in our solar system.

The $700 million mission won approval by NASA in 2017 to be the 14th Discovery Program mission, joining the likes of Mars Pathfinder, Kepler space telescope and Lunar Prospector.

“It really leans into NASA’s mission statement,” said NASA Associate Administrator Bob Cabana during a Wednesday press conference. “They explore the unknown part. We’re going to explore to increase our knowledge and discover things we don’t know.”

It had been targeting a launch in 2022 that would have shaved two years off its mission timeline, but issues with management of the mission during the COVID pandemic led to delays, and now the probe won’t reach Psyche until August 2029 after which it will begin a 26-month mission to observe the roughly 120-mile wide asteroid that scientists think is made of nickel and iron.

SpaceX Falcon Heavy set for 1st NASA launch to explore mysterious asteroid Psyche

It’s one of only nine metallic asteroids discovered among more than 1 million to date, and it’s by far the largest. NASA has also never visited a metallic asteroid. This one sits in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter orbiting the sun between 235 million to 309 million miles away.

“We hope that when we get to this metal world, it will just kind of reveal a treasure trove of scientific discovery and potential answers to our deepest questions about the solar system history and our place in it,” said NASA Science Mission Directorate associate administrator Nicki Fox.

As one hypothesis posits this is similar to the metal core that is found at the center of Earth and every other rocky planet in the solar system, it could reveal details for something scientists can’t get to, but it could be something else entirely.

“The origin of the the asteroid itself is a mystery, and we hope to uncover that when we get there in 2029 because finding out where it came from will teach us about the formation of our solar system,” Fox said. “Right now scientists believe that the asteroid Psyche could be part of a metal rich interior from the remnants of a small planet known as a planetesimal. But there’s also a belief that it could be a totally new type of primordial solar system object that’s never been seen before.”