Satellite in the wrong orbit after successful Alpha rocket liftoff

Firefly Aerospace has launched an investigation into why its Alpha rocket failed to place a satellite in its planned orbit.

The rocket was launched on Friday at 12:32 p.m. EDT from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

A mission update released by Firefly late Friday night on the company’s website says the rocket’s second stage “did not deliver the payload to its precise target orbit.” However, communication with the spacecraft has been established and mission operations are now underway.

The launch, known as FLTA004 and titled “Fly the Lightning”, had a successful liftoff and progressed seamlessly through each stage of flight, including stage one main engine cutoff, stage separation, stage two ignition, and fairing separation.

The second stage of the Alpha rocket was scheduled to “relight” a second time some 40 minutes after launch. The company provided no information on what went wrong with the relighting of the second stage.

The rocket was carrying a wideband Electronically Steerable Antenna (ESA) satellite designed by Lockheed Martin. The ESA payload is designed to help perform missions in space faster once a satellite is in orbit.

Based on an innovative, proprietary design, Lockheed Martin expects to calibrate the ESA sensor in a fraction of the time it takes to operationalize traditional on-orbit sensors, which historically can take months to be powered on, fully calibrated, and ready to perform their mission.

It's unknown how the mission will be affected after being placed in the wrong orbit.

“Firefly recognizes all that went into the preparation of the payload and would like to thank Lockheed Martin for their continued support,” FireFly said on their website. “In line with our core principles as a company, we will rapidly and continuously innovate to find a solution and ensure complete resolution of any anomaly we see during flight. We will work with our customer and government partners to investigate the stage two performance and determine the root cause.”

This was the fourth launch of an Alpha rocket by FireFly Aerospace.

A launch in October 2022 successfully placed a few small satellites into orbit. Known as smallsats, the satellites fell back to Earth and burned up in the atmosphere after reaching a lower orbit than planned.

The first Alpha launch in September 2021 failed to reach orbit after its first-stage engines shut down shortly after liftoff.