Update for 10:15 PM ET March 1: Firefly Aerospace scrapped the planned March 1 launch of its “Stairway to Seven” launch due to high winds. A new target date has not yet been announced.
Alpha is scheduled to be launched from Californias Vandenberg Space Force Base today during a two-hour window that opens at 7:50 p.m. EST (4:50 p.m. local California time; 0050 GMT March 2), on a mission Firefly calls “Stairway to Seven.”
Firefly will stream the launch live with its partner NASASpaceflight. Space.com will also carry the feed, if the Texas-based company makes it available.
As the name suggests, “Stairway to Seven” will be the seventh lift to date for the two-stage, 96.7-foot-tall (29.6-meter-tall) Alpha.
The sixth, called “Message in a Booster”, was launched on April 29 last year, carrying a prototype satellite for aerospace giant Lockheed Martin. However, things did not go according to plan. Alpha’s first stage booster broke apart shortly after stage separation, generating a shock wave that affected the upper stage’s thrust. As a result, the upper stage ran out of propellant shortly before reaching its target deployment trajectory, and payload was lost.
On August 26, the US Federal Aviation Administration cleared Alpha to return to flight. But a month later, the booster was to fly on “Stairway to Seven” exploded during a test at Firefly’s facility in Briggs, Texas, causing further delays.
“Stairway to Seven” will not carry any operational payload. Rather, it will serve “as a test flight, with the primary goal of achieving nominal first and second stage performance,” Firefly wrote in a assignment description.
It will also be the last flight of Alpha’s Block I configuration.
“Flight 7 will test and validate key systems in advance of Firefly’s Block II configuration upgrade on Flight 8 designed to improve reliability and manufacturability across the vehicle,” Firefly wrote in the mission statement. “The Block II configuration includes a 7-foot increase to the Alpha’s length, consolidated batteries and onboard avionics, an improved thermal protection system, and stronger carbon composite structures built with automated machinery.”
“Stairway to Seven” launches just one day before a big anniversary for Firefly: March 2, 2025, the company’s robotic Blue Ghost lunar lander touched down on the moon. Blue Ghost operated nominally for two weeks afterwards as planned, becoming the first private spacecraft ever to complete a lunar mission.
