The first launch of the Ukrainian-American rocket from the Firefly startup is scheduled for autumn

Ukraine-US space company Firefly Aerospace is preparing for the first Alpha rocket launch, which is scheduled for late October or early November.

This is reported by the international space publication Space.com.

Alpha is a two-stage launch vehicle designed for small payloads and is capable of launching up to 650 kg into sun-synchronous orbit or up to 1000 kg into low earth orbit.

“The first rocket launch was being prepared in early 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic affected the company’s plans. Due to delays in the supply of materials, the construction of the rocket has slowed down”, – the statement said.

It is noted that the founder of the company Maxim Polyakov, in order to achieve the launch this year, increased investments to expand the staff from 250 to 310 employees.

In addition to the Alpha project, Firefly Aerospace is also developing a Beta heavy-class rocket and an automatic lunar lander for NASA as part of the Artemis project, with the aim of which US President Donald Trump established a man’s return to the moon by 2024.

“Now the Alpha rocket is almost ready, and the launch is scheduled for late October or early November from the Vandenberg military base, where the rocket is also awaiting final tests”, – the newspaper writes.

“The launch is scheduled for mid-October this year, a couple of months earlier than we planned. The fire did little to stop us, it didn’t damage the test bench, and we still got most of the test data we needed at this stage.

Probably, this pushed us back for a month, and COVID took away from us for another month and a half. Overall, I think we were very lucky in both cases, we did not have to postpone everything for a longer period”, – said Tom Markusic, CEO of Firefly Aerospace.

“There have been more challenges than usual in this area over the past few months”, – added Firefly COO Robb Coolin.

The Firefly mobile stand reportedly departed for Vandenberg Base on July 20, and arrived in California on July 27.

“The Alpha rocket is designed to deliver small satellites into orbit. Usually such satellites are delivered as an additional load in large missions, this is the so-called “ridershare”. Alpha will specialize in small satellites and compete in the market due to the low cost of delivery for 1 kg of cargo.

For comparison, the launch of Alpha will cost about $ 15,000,000, while the launch of the Falcon 9 mission starts at 62 million”, – the newspaper notes.

The first Alpha launch will be a test launch, the rocket will carry numerous DREAM (Dedicated Research and Education Accelerator Mission) payloads: these will be the best academic and scientific projects that will be delivered into space for free. Projects from Ukraine will also be presented in the mission.

The second and third Alpha rockets are under construction, with flights scheduled for 2021. Each launch will take place 3 months apart. In the future, the company plans to reduce the pause between launches to several weeks.

Reference. Firefly Aerospace (formerly Firefly Space Systems) is a privately held aerospace company headquartered in Austin, Texas, USA that develops light launch vehicles for launching cargo into space. In 2017, the company was bought by Ukrainian entrepreneur Maxim Polyakov, he relaunched it under the new name Firefly Aerospace.

Source: epravda.com.ua