A problem with the upper stage of the Firefly Aerospace Alpha rocket caused it to enter the wrong orbit during the Dec. 22 launch of Lockheed Martin’s demonstration satellite. The Alpha rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 12:32 ET for a mission dubbed “Fly the Lightning” by Firefly. The launch was originally planned for December 20 but was postponed by two days due to weather conditions.

The rocket’s ascent appeared to go according to plan, and launch controllers reported that the booster stage had reached its nominal transition orbit. At the time, Firefly said a second upper stage burn was planned for about 40 minutes into orbit, followed by payload separation.

However, Firefly did not report the launch status for several hours. Meanwhile, tracking data from the US Space Force showed two objects in elliptical orbits 215 x 523 kilometers away from launch. This indicates that the upper stage has failed during the combustion cycle.

12 hours after launch, Firefly confirmed that the second stage was faulty. “The planned reburn of the Alpha 2 stage engine did not fully deliver the payload to the targeted orbit,” the company said. “We will work with our customers and government partners to investigate Phase 2 performance and determine the root cause.”

The mission payload was a small satellite developed and financed by Lockheed Martin. The purpose of Terran Orbital’s Nebula spacecraft was to demonstrate an electronically steered antenna that could be used on future broadband satellites. The company planned to use the satellite to demonstrate that the antenna could be quickly calibrated and deployed.

Firefly said in a statement that contact with the satellite was established and the mission is currently continuing. But the low end of the spacecraft’s orbit means it could reenter orbit within a few weeks.

This was Alpha’s fourth launch, three months after it successfully launched the Victus Nox rapid response space demonstration for the US Space Force. A launch in October 2022 also entered orbit, but the small satellite payload it carried returned several days after launch after being placed in an elliptical orbit rather than a higher circular orbit. Firefly said the launch was successful despite the early entry of the satellites and that the performance of both stages met the requirements.

Alpha’s first launch in September 2021 failed to reach orbit due to one of its first stage engines shutting down shortly after liftoff. The first stages of subsequent launches worked properly. Firefly plans to increase the number of Alpha flights, with at least four missions planned for 2024 and six missions for 2025, Firefly CEO Bill Weber said in an interview in November. The company is working on new production facilities capable of producing up to 24 Alphas per year.

Firefly is balancing this work on Alpha with early stage development of the Antares 330, a new version of Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket that will also be used on a new launch vehicle called MLV. Weber said the company hopes to have the Antares 330 ready for service by mid-2025 and the MLV by late 2025. Source