When SpaceX successfully launched its first Falcon Heavy booster Tuesday (Feb. 6) from the same Florida pad used by NASA's Apollo missions, the company claimed the title for the most powerful rocket. And for some companies, that might be a year-defining feat.But SpaceX and its CEO, Elon Musk, have a lot more coming this year, including launching astronauts on its crewed Dragon spacecraft and preparing its Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) for potential tests in 2019.

SpaceX's Falcon Heavy can launch up to 141,000 lbs. (64 metric tons) of payload into orbit, and sent Musk's Tesla Roadster on a deep-space ride toward the asteroid belt when the rocket blasted off from Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, Tuesday. That lift capacity allows SpaceX to launch heavier satellites into low Earth orbit, or reach higher geostationary orbits used by some satellites to keep station over the same part of Earth.

SpaceX advertises Falcon Heavy flights for $90 million a launch. The Delta IV Heavy, meanwhile, can launch 32 tons (29 metric tons) into orbit and costs between $300 million and $500 million per flight, according to Tommy Sanford, executive director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, told Space.com before the launch. That's a potentially huge cost savings.

So that's a big year for SpaceX, with potentially more big years to come. And it's all happening as the company continues its traditional Falcon 9 rocket launches for midsize satellite missions and NASA cargo deliveries to the International Space Station.

The Falcon Heavy debut was SpaceX's third launch of 2018, following two Falcon 9 missions in January that launched the mysterious Zuma payload for the U.S. government and the GovSat-1 communications satellite.

The next mission to fly will be a Falcon 9, launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, carrying the Paz satellite for the Spanish company Hisdesat. That mission is targeted for Feb. 17, according to Spaceflight Now, and could be followed on Feb. 22 with the launch of another Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station carrying the Hispasat 1F communications satellite for Spain's Hispasat.

Falcon Heavy Rocket Launch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbSwFU6tY1c