Firefly Aerospace launch overview

Kris Christiaens

Category: Launch overview

Read Time: 1 min

Published: 28 December 2021

Hits: 2075

Credit: Firefly Aerospace

Firefly Alpha is a two-stage orbital expendable launch vehicle developed by the American aerospace company Firefly Aerospace. This rocket was specifically developed to carry small and light commercial satellites into space. Firefly Aerospace designed the Firefly Alpha rocket to launch a 1000 kg payload to a 200 km low Earth orbit or a 630 kg payload to a 500 km Sun-synchronous orbit. The first launch of a Firfely Alpha rocket happened on 3 September 2021 from a leased launch pad at the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Learn all about the different launches of the commercial Firefly-Alpha rocket from the American space company Firfely Aerospace thanks to this overview!

Firefly Aerospace launch overview

No.	Date launch	Rocket	Launch base	Orbit	Payload	Patch	Mission succes?
1	03/09/2021		Vandenberg Space Force Base (California)	LEO	Serenity (Teachers in Space) Hiapo (Hawaii Science and Technology Museum) BSS 1 (Benchmark Space Systems) FossaSat 1b (FOSSA Systems) FossaSat 2 (FOSSA Systems) GENESIS-L (AMSAT EA) GENESIS-N (AMSAT EA) Qubik 1 (Libre Space Foundation) Qubik 2 (Libre Space Foundation) Spinnaker-3 / Firefly Capsule 1 (NASA / Firefly Aerospace)		Failure
2	01/10/2022		Vandenberg Space Force Base (California)	LEO	Serenity 2 (Teachers in Space) TechEdSat 15 (NASA Ames Research Center) GENESES L (AMSAT EA) GENESIS N (AMSAT EA) Qubik 3 (Libre Space Foundation) Qubik 4 (Libre Space Foundation) FossaSat 1b (Fossa Systems) Firefly Capsule 1 (Firefly Aerospace)		Success
3	15/09/2023		Vandenberg Space Force Base (California)	SSO	VICTUS NOX (U.S. Space Force)		Success
4	22/12/2023		Vandenberg Space Force Base (California)	LEO	Electronically Steerable Antenna demo (Lockheed Martin)		Partial failure

Images: Firefly Aerospace

Kris Christiaens

This article was published by FutureSpaceFlight founder and chief editor Kris Christiaens. Kris Christiaens has been passionate and fascinated by spaceflight and space exploration all his life and has written hundreds of articles on space projects, the commercial space industry and space missions over the past 20 years for magazines, books and websites. In late 2021, he founded the website FutureSpaceFlight with the goal of promoting new space companies and commercial space projects and compiling news of these start-ups and companies on one website.