With each Falcon Heavy launch, the rocket puts on a dramatic showing back on Earth. After Tuesday’s mission, the company only attempted to recover two of the Falcon Heavy rocket’s first-stage rocket boosters — the tall white sticks that are strapped together to give the rocket its heightened power at liftoff. As planned, the center booster was left to plunge into the ocean, where it will remain, because it did not have enough leftover fuel to guide its journey home, according to a news release from the US military’s Space Systems Command. The two side boosters, however, made their signature synchronized landing on ground pads near the Florida coastline. In the past, SpaceX has attempted to land all three of the rocket’s boosters back on landing pads on land and at sea so that they can be refurbished and reused on future missions. It does this to cut down on mission costs. The company has yet to suceed at retrieving all three, although it’s come dramatically close. The two side boosters made a pinpoint, synchronized landing on ground pads after an April 2019 mission, and the rocket’s center booster touched down on a sea-faring platform. But then, rough waves at sea toppled it over. All about this rocket Though the Falcon Heavy is the most powerful operational rocket in the world, there are two massive rockets waiting in the wings to claim that title. NASA’s Space Launch System, or SLS, rocket, which is currently slated to attempt its inaugural launch later in November to send the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission around the moon, is sitting in the Kennedy Space Center’s towering Vehicle Assembly Building, which lies just a few miles from the launch pad where the Falcon Heavy will take flight. Tesla CEO Elon Musk introduces the Cybertruck at Tesla's design studio Thursday, Nov. 21, 2019, in Hawthorne, Calif. Ringo H.W. Chiu/AP