Firefly Aerospace Just Reached Orbit For The First Time
Reaching orbit for the first time is an immensely difficult process that few companies around the world have managed to successfully complete. This goal usually includes a massive investment of both time and money with a host of expensive failures along the way. Often times this initial goal can be the difference between a company succeeding in the long run or eventually going out of business.
Just earlier this morning, Firefly Aerospace managed to successfully reach orbit on the second ever orbital test flight of Alpha. This mission, fittingly named To The Black, saw Alpha lift off from Vanderberg Space Force Base early this morning and deploy multiple payloads in orbit not long after. Being Alpha’s second launch ever this is an immense milestone for the company and very impressive as well.
Just over a year ago we watched the first flight of Alpha that was unable to reach orbit and ended with an explosion. Now, in a short period of time, Firefly applied what it learned from that first experience and now has the capability to reach orbit. Here I will go more in-depth into this morning’s launch, Firefly’s plan going forward, the launch vehicle responsible, and more.
Successful Launch
It has been quite the journey as Firefly attempted to launch Alpha for a second time. After multiple scrubs earlier in September, they had another just before this launch. Specifically, yesterday on September 30th Alpha was set to launch and got to T-0 with partial engine ignition before being scrubbed. At the time, Firefly tweeted saying, “Update: The vehicle went into auto abort after ignition. This is designed into the system to ensure safety. The team scrubbed tonight’s launch attempt and is reviewing data to determine our next launch window.” Thankfully, not long after the company highlighted that they were only hours away from a second launch attempt.
Finally, after a long wait, this morning at 12:01 am, Alpha lifted off from the pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base. Here the rocket accelerated into the darkness and soon reached Max Q without any issues. A few more minutes into the launch and Firefly announced a successful main engine cutoff. The fairings were then separated as they prepared to deploy the payloads inside. Around 12:08 am, Firefly tweeted mentioning, “Alpha has reached orbit! FLTA002 has gone #ToTheBlack.” However, the mission wasn’t quite done yet as they still had to properly deploy the payloads and more. Next, the stage 2 engine restart was confirmed. Firefly included an image from mission control where you can see the second stage with Earth in the background. Finally, around 1 hour and half after launch, the company tweeted saying, “3 payloads have been deployed successfully, and customers have confirmed acquisition of signal.” They also tweeted pointing out, “100% Mission success. Congratulations to the entire team.” This concluded the second ever test flight of the Alpha launch vehicle and the completion of To The Black.
Taking a closer look at the payloads, there were 3 separate CubeSats launched. The first was from Teachers In Space and is expected to collect flight data during the mission and make it available to the educational community for analysis and comparison to data collected on other flights and vehicles. This data includes Atmospheric pressure, Temperature, and Radiation via a matched pair of Geiger counters, one wrapped in experimental radiation protection material, and one unwrapped. Next, NASA had a 3U CubeSat. Specifically, the TechEdSat-15 is a three-unit CubeSat that weighs 9.1 pounds and carries experiments that are being advanced in TechEdSat’s Nano-Orbital Workshop (NOW) rapid flight development series. TechEdSat-15’s primary experiment is a version of an exo-brake intended to survive much higher temperature environments – several hundred degrees – than in previous flights. It will demonstrate the next step forward in nanosatellites’ ability to target an Earth entry point. The exo-brake is a device that applies drag in Earth’s exosphere – the uppermost reaches of the atmosphere – to slow the speed of a satellite’s descent and change its direction. This experiment will permit the satellite to survive closer-to-peak heating, maintain telemetry, and assess the dynamics as the system enters the top of the atmosphere. Finally, PicoBus launched a picosat deployer, meant to deploy 6 picosatellites into space and test the world’s first fully free and open source telecommunications constellation. All of which managed to reach orbit successfully and acquire a signal back to Earth.
One year ago, around two minutes into the flight, data indicated that an electrical issue caused the shutdown of one of the four first stage Reaver engines of Alpha. This anomaly resulted in a safe termination of flight by the Range using the Flight Termination System, ending the mission. It’s clear this time around that Firefly fixed this issue and reached orbit for the first time.
Alpha Overview & Future
This mission was a very big deal not only for Firefly Aerospace as a company but also the Alpha launch vehicle which just proved itself as a viable option within the small lift launch market. Alpha has a payload to LEO of 1,170 kilograms and stands at just under 30 meters in length. Alpha is 100% manufactured in the USA and designed to be the most reliable small satellite launcher available. Alpha’s pump-fed, regeneratively-cooled engines use standard LOx/RP, and its avionics systems, such as the flight computer and communication system, employ COTS components with established flight heritage. Modern advances in carbon composite materials are used to create strong, lightweight primary structures such as propellant tanks. Entirely manufactured and launched in the USA, Firefly able to keep costs to a minimum while achieving unprecedented dependability.
One of the most important features of Alpha is the engines. Firefly highlights that Alpha utilizes well established propulsion technology. Both stages use common designs: copper regen-cooled LOx/RP-1 thrust chambers, a simple tap-off cycle which drives single shaft turbopumps, nozzle-mounted turbine exhaust manifolds, and hydraulic actuators. Innovations in Firefly engines include the “Crossfire” injector, tap-off geometry, dual-mounted electrically actuated, trimmable propellant main valves, and ultra-compact horizontal turbopump mounting. The upper stage engine, “Lightning,” includes a turbine-exhaust cooled refractory metal high area ratio nozzle extension. The first stage “Reaver” engines feature simple single axis gimballing. Consistent with the overall Alpha vehicle design, cost and performance are traded and optimized in Lightning and Reaver components to provide the best payload performance value. Just earlier today we watched both the Reaver and Lightning engines in action as they successfully played their part in the mission.
As far as the structure of Alpha, Firefly utilizes advanced carbon-fiber composites for the entire airframe of the rocket, including the state-of-the-art, linerless, cryogenic propellant tanks. Firefly believes that composite materials are ideally suited to launch vehicle structures due to their high strength, low density and tailorable material properties. This allows Firefly Alpha to lift heavier payloads than a similar metal rocket. Finally, an often overlooked part is the avionics of a launch vehicle. Firefly Avionics hardware utilizes a combination of custom designed state-of-the-art and Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) components. Data Acquisition is accomplished using a rugged, modular Data Acquisition Chassis, which provides analog to digital conversion of all sensor data, and further packages the data and transmits to the Flight Computer via an onboard Ethernet network. The Flight Computer incorporates all vehicle telemetry and transmits data along with video to various Earth ground stations along the flight trajectory, for the duration of the flight. All of which managed to work together in perfect harmony earlier today.
From here Firefly has so many different opportunities. Back on February 17th Firefly tweeted saying, “The Firefly team is laser-focused on reaching orbit this year. With the successful stage 2 hot fire today, both stages of our flight 2 Alpha vehicle have now completed acceptance testing and are ready for flight. See you on the pad.” Included with this tweet was a short video that began with Tom Markusic talking a bit about what they were working on. He pointed out that in addition to the second Alpha rocket being worked on, they were also already working on two other flight vehicles in the same building. This suggests that by now there should be quite a bit of progress on the next launch vehicles as Firefly now works to improve launch cadence and make reaching orbit a consistent thing. It’s important to point out that just because they reached orbit once doesn’t mean they are guaranteed to have great success with the rocket. However, today’s launch was a great mission and milestone for the company.
Conclusion
Firefly Aerospace has been busy over the last few years as they worked on the ambitious goal of reaching orbit for the first time. This being said, earlier today they launched Alpha apart of the To The Black mission, and managed to reach orbit and deploy all the payloads as intended. This is a big deal for the company and an exciting glimpse into the possible future of Firefly Aerospace. We will have to wait and see how it progresses and the impact it has on the space industry.