Mission Updates

August 26, 2025: Firefly Aerospace has received Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) clearance to resume Alpha rocket launches following the Flight 6 mishap on April 29, 2025.

The company conducted a thorough investigation with the FAA and in parallel assembled an Independent Review Board of multiple government agencies, customers, and industry experts. The findings confirmed Firefly’s flight safety system performed nominally through all phases of flight. Both Alpha stages landed safely in the Pacific Ocean and the launch posed no risk to public safety.

Alpha Flight 6 lifted off and ascended nominally through stage separation. Alpha’s first stage then experienced a rupture milliseconds after stage separation. The pressure wave hit Alpha’s second stage, leading to the loss of the engine’s nozzle extension and substantially reducing stage two thrust. The second stage was able to recover attitude control and continued to ascend to an altitude of 320 km until running out of propellant. The vehicle was three seconds short of achieving orbital velocity and five seconds short of the target payload deployment orbit.

The ground-based video, onboard telemetry, post-flight empirical testing and Computational Fluid Dynamics analysis corroborated excessive heat from Plume Induced Flow Separation as the most probable root cause of the mishap. Alpha Flight 6 flew a higher angle of attack than prior missions.  Plume-induced flow separation intensified heat on the leeward side reducing structural margins, causing the booster to rupture from stage separation induced loads.

Fortunately, the corrective actions are straight forward: increase thermal protection system thickness on Stage 1 and reduce angle of attack during key phases of the flight. Corrective actions have already been implemented.

“At Firefly, technical challenges aren’t roadblocks — they’re catalysts,” said Jordi Paredes Garcia, Alpha Chief Engineer at Firefly Aerospace. “Each mission provides us more data and enables us to continuously improve. Following all the lessons learned and corrective actions implemented, we were able to further increase Alpha’s reliability.  We are grateful to the FAA, our customers, and the independent review board for their continued support through this process.”

With FAA approval to return to flight and corrective actions implemented, Firefly is now working to determine the next available launch window for Alpha Flight 7.

Mission Summary

Alpha FLTA006 is the second mission Firefly launched 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. The mission carried Lockheed Martin’s LM 400 tech demo with a goal to prove out the risk-reduction and pathfinding efforts the company has done for its multi-mission satellite bus.

Payload

Lockheed Martin’s LM 400 Technology Demonstrator is the latest in a series of self-funded missions by the company to demonstrate the maturity of new technology on orbit and reduce risk for their customers. The LM 400 tech demo was specifically built to showcase the company’s pathfinding efforts for its LM 400 mid-sized, multi-mission satellite bus, and to demonstrate the space vehicle’s operational capabilities on orbit for potential customers. As a platform, Lockheed Martin’s LM 400 is the company’s most flexible satellite bus, capable of serving military, commercial or civil customers. It can be customized to host a variety of missions – including remote sensing, communications, imaging and radar – and operate in any orbit.

Flight Timeline

The following graphic shows an approximate timeline (HH:MM:SS) for the key mission milestones after liftoff.