Firefly Alpha from Firefly Aerospace will launch on March 26 from Space Launch Complex 2W at Vandenberg SFB at 6:37 – 8:17 am PDT, at a cost of $15 million.
This is the sixth flight of the Firefly Alpha small satellite launcher, launching the demonstration mission for Lockheed Martin’s new LM400 satellite bus, which will carry a communications payload.
The satellite bus is customizable to support different missions, including remote sensing, communications, imagery and radar Earth observations. It can also support different kinds of orbits and launch configurations.
Alpha FLTA006 is the second mission Firefly is launching for Lockheed Martin and the first of Firefly’s multi-launch agreement with Lockheed Martin that includes up to 25 missions over the next five years.
This mission will launch Lockheed Martin’s LM 400 tech demo to prove out the risk-reduction and pathfinding efforts the company has done for its multi-mission satellite bus. Launching the mid-size satellite to low Earth orbit, FLTA006 will further validate Alpha’s robust performance to take customers directly to their preferred orbits as the only operational 1 metric ton rocket.
The forecast calls for a temperature of 53°F, clear skies, 0% cloud cover and a wind speed of 5mph.