By Joey Roulette
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha rocket suffered a technical issue on Tuesday as it ascended into space on its sixth flight, causing a Lockheed Martin satellite it was supposed to place into orbit to crash into the Pacific Ocean.
About two minutes following liftoff from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, the engine nozzle on Alpha’s upper portion broke off in space moments after it attempted to separate from the rocket’s core booster as designed, “substantially reducing the engine’s thrust,” Firefly said.
While typical rocket mishaps trigger explosions or on-board shutdown commands, Alpha’s upper rocket body fired for several minutes and ascended to 320 km (200 miles) in altitude. But it failed to reach its intended orbit and was pulled back into the atmosphere by Earth’s gravity.
“The stage and payload have now safely impacted the Pacific Ocean in a cleared zone north of Antarctica,” Firefly said.
During Alpha’s ascent, a company livestream of the flight showed several pieces of debris flying off the rocket. On-screen altitude and speed data disappeared moments before, earlier than usual.
With Tuesday’s events, four of six Alpha flights since 2021 have failed. Firefly, which was able to achieve a breakthrough moon landing in March, is vying with a handful of similar upstarts seeking to build a launch business in a market dominated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
The Alpha mission was the first under an agreement between Firefly and Lockheed for up to 25 flights through 2029. The satellite was self-funded by Lockheed and called LM 400 Technology Demonstrator, an effort to test technologies that Lockheed plans to sell to other customers, such as the Pentagon.
“Navigating risk and going fast are part of these self-funded demonstrations,” a Lockheed spokesman said, adding that the satellite’s production yielded insights that will benefit future customers.
About an hour after the launch, Firefly posted on X that a mishap put “the vehicle in a lower than planned orbit,” then deleted that statement. The company said it was working with Lockheed, the U.S. Space Force and Federal Aviation Administration to determine the root cause of the failure.
With Alpha, Firefly hopes to fulfill demand from the U.S. Defense Department for launching national security payloads into space, particularly under tight timelines. The company had a successful launch in 2023 in a Space Force mission to demonstrate rapid-launch capabilities.
Founded in 2014, Austin-based Firefly went bankrupt in 2017, changed ownership amid U.S. national security concerns in 2022, ousted its CEO over an inappropriate relationship in 2024 then landed on the moon on its first try in March.
(This story has been corrected to fix the headline to clarify that the failure occurred after the launch)
(Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Mark Porter, Alexandra Hudson and Cynthia Osterman)
