{"id":189856,"date":"2026-03-13T07:53:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T07:53:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/189856\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T07:53:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T07:53:14","slug":"firefly-aerospace-finds-rocket-success-for-first-time-in-20-months-orlando-sentinel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/189856\/","title":{"rendered":"Firefly Aerospace finds rocket success for first time in 20 months \u2013 Orlando Sentinel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Firefly Aerospace grabbed headlines in 2025 when its Blue Ghost lander<\/a> became the first by a commercial company to stick its moon landing. The company\u2019s rocket business, though, had been pretty quiet.<\/p>\n

That changed Wednesday after flying its small Alpha rocket on a successful orbital mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base, the first successful flight of the rocket since July 2025. The rocket lifted off at 5:50 p.m. PDT (8:30 p.m. EDT) from Space Launch Complex 2 with a demonstration payload for Lockheed Martin.<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s last attempt in April 2025 ended in failure when the second stage engine was damaged during separation from the first stage.<\/p>\n

The mission dubbed \u201cStairway to Seven\u201d was the rocket\u2019s seventh attempt since the first in 2021, but only the third to reach orbit successfully.<\/p>\n

The flight was the first with Block II configuration upgrades, including new avionics developed by the company and an enhanced thermal protection system.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlpha Flight 7 was flawlessly executed with all mission requirements completed, further proving the resiliency, innovation and passion of the Firefly team,\u201d said company CEO Jason Kim in a press release.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the last several months, we took a hard look at our processes across engineering, production, test, integration and operations and invested the time required to make a series of improvements to ensure a higher level of quality and reliability in every Alpha we deliver and launch as we move to our Block II upgrade,\u201d Kim added.<\/p>\n

A planned Flight 8 would feature a complete Block II configuration, including adding another 7 feet to the rocket\u2019s length and stronger carbon composite structures.<\/p>\n

\u201cFlight 7 served as a critical opportunity to validate Alpha\u2019s performance ahead of our Block II upgrade, and this team knocked it out of the park,\u201d said Adam Oakes, the company\u2019s vice president of launch. \u201cWe have full confidence in our Alpha rocket, and we\u2019re committed to continuous improvement as we roll out Block II.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s rocket endeavors are of interest to Northrop Grumman<\/a>, which has partnered with Firefly for both a new version of Northrop\u2019s Antares rocket called the Antares 330, and a new, medium-lift rocket to be called Eclipse.<\/p>\n

The old version of Antares has not flown since 2023 when the company used the last of its supply of Russian-made engines for the rocket\u2019s first stage. The Antares 330 will use seven of Texas-based Firefly\u2019s Miranda engines on a redesigned first-stage.<\/p>\n

Both the Antares 330 and the new Eclipse rocket will launch from Virginia\u2019s Eastern Shore from NASA\u2019s Wallops Flight Facility, although Firefly also has a launch lease at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.<\/p>\n

Without its own rocket, Northrop Grumman has had to rely on SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets for its Cygnus resupply spacecraft missions to the International Space Station with at least one more, NG-24, coming up as soon as April on the Space Coast.<\/p>\n

Firefly, meanwhile, is also planning its second moon lander mission under NASA\u2019s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.<\/p>\n

Set to launch sometime in 2026, a SpaceX Falcon 9 will bring both Firefly\u2019s Blue Ghost lander and a new Elytra Dark orbiting transfer vehicle on the Blue Ghost Mission 2 to land on the far side of the moon and take advantage of the radio-quiet environment to deploy an array of antennas for a a low-frequency radio telescope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Firefly Aerospace grabbed headlines in 2025 when its Blue Ghost lander became the first by a commercial company…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[558,114,115,139,141,140,554,109,76686,1769],"class_list":["post-189856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-business","tag-latest-headlines","tag-news","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-science","tag-social","tag-social-business","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}