Replace for 10:15 p.m. ET on March 1: Firefly Aerospace scrubbed the deliberate March 1 launch of its “Stairway to Seven” launch as a result of excessive winds. A brand new goal date has not but been introduced.
Alpha is scheduled to launch from California’s Vandenberg Area Power Base in the present day throughout a two-hour window that opens at 7:50 p.m. EST (4:50 p.m. native California time; 0050 GMT on March 2), on a mission Firefly calls “Stairway to Seven.”
Firefly will stream the launch dwell with its associate NASASpaceflight. Area.com will carry the feed as effectively, if the Texas-based firm makes it obtainable.
As its title suggests, “Stairway to Seven” would be the seventh liftoff thus far for the two-stage, 96.7-foot-tall (29.6-meter-tall) Alpha.
The sixth, referred to 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 keeping with plan, nonetheless. Alpha’s first-stage booster broke aside simply after stage separation, producing a stress 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 misplaced.
On Aug. 26, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration cleared Alpha to return to flight. However a month later, the booster slated to fly on “Stairway to Seven” exploded throughout a take a look at at Firefly’s facility in Briggs, Texas, inflicting additional delays.
“Stairway to Seven” will not carry any operational payloads. Moderately, it can serve “as a take a look at flight, with the first aim to attain nominal first and second stage efficiency,” Firefly wrote in a mission description.
It’ll even be the ultimate flight of Alpha’s Block I configuration.
“Flight 7 will take a look at and validate key techniques 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 a giant 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.
