SpaceX launched the company's Falcon Heavy rocket on its inaugural commercial mission on Thursday evening.

This was the second flight for Falcon Heavy, which became the most powerful rocket in use in the world after SpaceX's successful test flight in February 2018. That launch was purely demonstration — Thursday represents the first revenue-generating flight of Falcon Heavy.

Falcon Heavy launched from SpaceX's launchpad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Built out of three of the company's Falcon 9 rockets, Falcon Heavy's three cores stand side by side to create a 27-engine colossus. Together, those engines create about 5.1 million pounds of thrust.

A few minutes after liftoff, the three lower "booster" stages of the rocket separated, flipped and return to Earth. The side boosters on each side of the rocket returned to SpaceX's concrete pads on the Florida coastline and the larger center booster went to the company's autonomous barge in the Atlantic Ocean. During the demonstration flight the center booster ran out of fuel and crashed in the water. But, for Thursday's flight, all three boosters landed successfully.