Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha rocket will return to flight immediately (March 1) after a 10-month-long grounding, and you may watch the motion reside.
As its identify suggests, “Stairway to Seven” would be the seventh liftoff to this point for the two-stage, 96.7-foot-tall (29.6-meter-tall) Alpha.
The sixth, known as “Message in a Booster,” launched on April 29 of final yr, carrying a prototype satellite tv for pc for aerospace big Lockheed Martin. Issues did not go in accordance with plan, nevertheless. Alpha’s first-stage booster broke aside simply after stage separation, producing a strain wave that affected the higher stage’s thrust. In consequence, the higher stage ran out of propellant shortly earlier than reaching its goal deployment orbit, and the payload was lost.
On Aug. 26, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration cleared Alpha to return to flight. But a month later, the booster slated to fly on “Stairway to Seven” exploded during a test at Firefly’s facility in Briggs, Texas, causing further delays.
“Stairway to Seven” won’t carry any operational payloads. Rather, it will serve “as a test flight, with the primary goal to achieve nominal first and second stage performance,” Firefly wrote in a mission description.
It’s going to even be the ultimate flight of Alpha’s Block I configuration.
“Flight 7 will take a look at and validate key methods forward of Firefly’s Block II configuration improve on Flight 8 that is designed to boost reliability and manufacturability throughout the car,” Firefly wrote within the mission description. “The Block II configuration features a 7-foot improve to Alpha’s size, consolidated batteries and avionics inbuilt home, an enhanced thermal safety system and stronger carbon composite constructions constructed with automated equipment.”
“Stairway to Seven” will launch only a day earlier than an enormous anniversary for Firefly: On March 2, 2025, the corporate’s robotic Blue Ghost lunar lander touched down on the moon. Blue Ghost operated nominally for 2 weeks thereafter as deliberate, changing into the primary personal spacecraft ever to finish a lunar floor mission.
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