Firefly Alpha Rocket Places Satellite Load In Wrong Orbit

Lockheed Martin loading launch by Firefly Alpha. (X @Firefly_Space)

Firefly Aerospace, a private aerospace company, launched the Firefly Alpha rocket on Friday, December 22 from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

Since the start, this launch has not run normally. Supposedly, the Alpha rocket on the Fly the Lightning mission was launched on December 20, but its launch was delayed due to weather problems.

Two days later, the rocket climbing initially went according to plan as the upper stage had reached a nominal transfer orbit. However, after Firefly planned to burn the upper stage for the second time about 40 minutes later, the company did not provide any more updates.

From Spacenews' report, tracking data from the United States Space Force (USSF) shows that two objects that are Alpha payloads are within an elliptical orbit measuring 215 x 523 kilometers.

This means that this launch did not go according to plan because the payload developed by Lockheed Martin was in an inappropriate part of the orbit. This was confirmed by Firefly about 12 hours after the launch took place.

Alpha's second-stage engine restartion doesn't deliver payloads to the right target orbit. However, communications with the spacecraft have been established and mission operations are now underway, Firefly said through the company's official release.

Firefly realized that the error could not be ignored. In accordance with the company's commitment to find various solutions to the anomalous flight case, Firefly will cooperate with several parties to find the cause of the error.

"We will quickly and continue to innovate to find solutions and ensure a thorough completion of any anomalies we see during the flight. We will work closely with customers and government partners to investigate the performance of the second phase and determine the root cause of the problem," explains Firefly.