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Firefly Aerospacesent its Alpha skyrocket to orbit this cockcrow , with the company carrying to space a freight from Lockheed Martin . However , the company has yet to update the public on whether it successfully deployed the satellite to its name and address orbit — which could suggest an issue with the rocket ’s second stage .
Today ’s launch marks the fourthly - ever flight of Firefly ’s Alpha rocket . The fomite take in off from California ’s Vandenberg Space Force Base at 9:32 a.m. local meter . The mission , call Fly the Lightning , was a commercial-grade launch for client Lockheed Martin . The rocket was carrying Lockheed ’s sales demonstrator payload , ring the Electronically Steerable Antenna ( ESA ) engineering demonstrator , to low Earth orbit .
At around 9:40 a.m. local time , Fireflytweetedthat it would relight Alpha ’s second - microscope stage engine to circularize its orbit in around 40 minute . From there , the Lockheed Martin payload should have been deployed . But the party has yet to ply an update four hour subsequently .
ESA is a character of antenna array that can be electronically steered . Lockheed says its proprietary figure will start the company to fine-tune the novel ESA sensor at a fraction of the sentence compared to traditional on - orbit sensors , which can take months to power on and be ready for mathematical process . The caller ’s ESA sales demonstrator loading was integrate on a planet charabanc built by Terran Orbital ( Lockheed owns nigh 7 % of the outstanding shares in Terran ) .
While the basal bearing of the delegation is deploy the load , Firefly said that its mission squad is also tracking the total working hours from when they received the payload to launch readiness , to continue demonstrating to the Space Force that it ’s subject of providing speedy launch capabilities .
Rapid launch is top - of - mind for the Space Force ; Firefly already demonstrated it once during the last Alpha mission that determine a new record for launch readiness . For that foreign mission , Firefly had just 24 minute to complete last launching preparations , capsulize the load and mate it to the rocket .
