Firefly Aerospace’s two-stage Alpha rocket on Monday suffered a failure during the first of 25 missions purchased last year by customer Lockheed Martin, marking its fourth partial or complete failure in six launch attempts.
The mishap prevented Lockheed’s payload—a technology demonstration satellite—from reaching orbit. The FAA on Tuesday said it will require Firefly to complete a mishap investigation before Alpha is cleared for its next launch.
Firefly in a postlaunch update said the mission, dubbed “Message in a Booster,” proceeded as planned up until stage separation. The company has not yet identified the root cause of the mishap. But it confirmed that the nozzle extension on the upper stage’s lone Lighting engine was lost after the booster was jettisoned, preventing it from reaching orbital velocity.
“We are working with our Lockheed Martin customer, the Space Force, and FAA to conduct a thorough investigation and determine the root cause,” Firefly said.
Alpha lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base (KVBG) in California at 9:37 a.m. EDT on Monday after a ground support issue pushed back the previous day’s attempt. It climbed smoothly over the Pacific Ocean until stage separation occurred about 2 minutes and 35 seconds into flight. At that point, a cloud of vapor was visible on Firefly’s livestream before it cut to a ground-based camera, which showed debris falling away as the upper stage continued ascending. An onboard camera provided a glimpse of the damaged Lightning engine.
Firefly said the upper stage reached an altitude of 320 kilometers, but its speed was too slow to maintain orbit. Both it and its payload—Lockheed’s LM 400 demonstrator—splashed down in the South Pacific near Antarctica.
Capable of launching about 2,200 pounds of payload to low-Earth orbit (LEO), Alpha sits somewhere in the middle of the orbital launch vehicle spectrum. It is designed to serve customers with satellites too large for light launchers but too small to justify booking a more powerful rocket, such as SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9. That in-between niche is underserved in commercial spaceflight, but a handful of firms, such as Germany’s Isar Aerospace, are working to address it.
So far, though, Alpha has proven unreliable. The rocket exploded about two minutes into its debut mission in 2021. Its second mission in 2022 reached orbit but deployed its payloads too low, causing them to reenter earlier than intended. Its third and fifth launches were successful, but sandwiched between them was another failed orbital deployment for Lockheed Martin due to a faulty upper stage engine relight.
Though Alpha has struggled to reach orbit consistently, Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander had no issue reaching the moon in March. The two-week mission marked the first successful commercial moon landing in history and achieved the “longest commercial operations on the moon to date,” the company said.
Despite its setbacks, Firefly holds the fourth-largest confirmed launch backlog among U.S. providers, according to media website Ars Technica. That includes 25 Alpha launches for Lockheed through 2029 in addition to orders from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Reconnaissance Office, and a handful of commercial customers including L3Harris. The company is also developing its larger Medium Launch Vehicle in partnership with Northrop Grumman.
Like this story? We think you’ll also like the Future of FLYING newsletter sent every Thursday afternoon. Sign up now.
