The first orbital launch of Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha rocket has ended in an explosion just minutes after take-off. The video shows the rocket performing a perfect liftoff from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
But after two-and-a-half minutes, the mission came to an abrupt end when the rocket suddenly exploded. Around 30 seconds before the explosion, Dodd suggested something might be wrong when he noticed the rocket was taking longer than expected to achieve supersonic speed. He said: “That’s may be not great … there’s a chance the vehicle could be slightly underperforming.”
Firefly was carrying DREAM
After the explosion, the seven-year-old Texas-based aerospace company was swift to tweet about the new rocket, “an anomaly during first stage ascent that resulted in the loss of the vehicle,” adding that more info will be provided soon.
Firefly’s two-stage Alpha rocket is 95 feet tall and is designed to launch payloads of up to 2,200 pounds to low-Earth orbit. The failed mission was ferrying a payload called DREAM (Dedicated Research and Education Accelerator Mission) that had several technical and non-technical items submitted by educational institutions and non-profit organizations across the globe.
While the failure is a setback for Firefly, such accidents are not unusual during early initial test flights. Indeed, Firefly CEO Tom Markusic said last month that the company might not complete the mission.
Another rocket in the works
“It’s not unusual to have an anomaly on the first flight,” he said, adding, “Alpha is a pretty straightforward rocket design, so whatever problem we might have, we think it is something that can be addressed relatively quickly.”
On the company’s website, it’s mentioned that it wants to launch Alpha twice per month, deploying small satellites into low-Earth orbit for global customers and go head-to-head with SpaceX, Rocket Lab, and Virgin Orbit.
The space company is currently developing another rocket dubbed Beta, and earlier this year it was awarded a $93 million contract by NASA to make a lunar lander called Blue Ghost that will deliver science and technology payloads to the lunar surface in the coming years.
