Update 2:18 p.m. EDT Tuesday: Firefly confirmed the stage separation anomaly prevented the deployment of Lockheed Martin’s LM 400 Technology Demonstration satellite bus.
Firefly Aerospace encountered an issue during the early part of Tuesday’s Alpha rocket launch that prevented the vehicle from delivering Lockheed Martin’s technology demonstration satellite to orbit.
Less than three minutes into the launch of the mission, dubbed ‘Message in a Booster,’ Firefly said the rocket achieved “target separation velocity,” but then ran into what ultimately proved to be an insurmountable issue related to the upper stage engine, called Lightning.
“The rocket then experienced a mishap between stage separation and second stage ignition that led to the loss of the Lightning engine nozzle extension, substantially reducing the engine’s thrust,” Firefly said in a statement published at 2 p.m. EDT (1800 UTC). “Initial indications showed Alpha’s upper stage reached 320 km in altitude. However, upon further assessment, the team learned the upper stage did not reach orbital velocity, and the stage and payload have now safely impacted the Pacific Ocean in a cleared zone north of Antarctica.”
A perfect storm of range restrictions and suboptimal weather finally cleared for Firefly Aerospace. After delaying the flight of their sixth Alpha rocket for more than a month, the company launched its sixth Alpha rocket, which flew away from the launch pad surrounded by a thick marine layer on Tuesday morning.
The rocket, designated FLTA006 by Firefly, lifted off at the beginning of the Tuesday launch window at 6:37 a.m. PDT (9:37 a.m. EDT, 1337 UTC). After its launch from Space Launch Complex 2 West (SLC-2W) at Vandenberg Space Force Base, and during stage separation, tracking cameras captured images of a debris field that was created at the time of separation.
“Firefly recognizes the hard work that went into payload development and would like to thank our mission partners at Lockheed Martin for their continued support,” the company wrote. “The team is working closely with our customers and the FAA to conduct an investigation and determine root cause of the anomaly. We will provide more information on our mission page after the investigation is completed.”
Onboard the Alpha rocket was Lockheed Martin’s LM 400 Technology Demonstration (Tech Demo) satellite bus. The mission was the first of a series of up to 25 launches that Lockheed Martin purchased from Firefly Aerospace, which was announced in June 2024.
“Firefly is honored to continue this partnership with Lockheed Martin and appreciates their confidence in our rapid launch services to support their critical missions for years to come,” said Bill Weber, who was CEO of Firefly Aerospace at the time of the announcement. “The Firefly team has scaled up Alpha production and testing and significantly streamlined our launch operations to fly Alpha more frequently and responsively. This allows us to continue delivering the one metric ton rocket the industry is demanding.”
Following the failed launch, Chip Eschenfelder, the business communications lead for Lockheed Martin Space’s National Security Space office, told Spaceflight Now in a statement that the company was working alongside Firefly on the investigation.
“During launch [Tuesday], the Firefly rocket experienced an anomaly and our LM 400 Technology Demonstration satellite was lost. We are coordinating with the Firefly team to determine the root cause,” Eschenfelder said. “Navigating risk and going fast are part of these self-funded demonstrations, and the knowledge we’ve gained already from the LM 400 production and processing will also benefit future customer missions.”
The satellite was first encapsulated inside Alpha payload fairings on March 11 and prepared for a launch on March 15. However on Friday, March 14, Firefly announced that their planned weekend launch was being delayed “due to a Range constraint at Vandenberg.”
The company never explicitly said what was occupying the Western Range, but sources tell Spaceflight Now that it was due to preparations for a series of missions launching on behalf the National Reconnaissance Office.
That run began with the flight of the Transporter-13 mission on March 14, which carried “a research and development demonstrator” that consisted of two 6U CubeSats that were designed and operated by the NRO’s Advanced Systems and Technology Directorate (AS&T).
That was followed less than a week later by the NROL-57 mission on March 20 on another SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. More recently, there were a series of NRO missions on two more Falcon 9 rockets and a Northrop Grumman Minotaur 4 rocket on April 12, 16 and 20.
Those combined with suboptimal weather conditions for the launch of a comparatively newer rocket prevented Firefly Aerospace from making a launch attempt on the ‘Message in a Booster’ mission.
During a media roundtable on the sidelines of the 40th Space Symposium, Bob Behnken, a former NASA astronaut and vice president of Strategy and Business Development for Lockheed Martin’s Ignite initiative and Commercial Civil Space, pointed to some of the complexities they have faced.
“A new rocket, like Firefly’s rocket, does have some restrictions in terms of what risk posture the Range needs to assume to make sure the appropriate ground facilities and civilian population is protected,” Behnken said. “I won’t go into every building and what those constraints are, but there are three that we’re watching really closely. Sometimes those change based on other launch or other movements that are happening on base. And so, we’ll be managing that as we go through.”
Spaceflight Now asked Behnken at the time if just the flight cadence of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, regardless of customer, was impacting the ability of Firefly to launch. He said, that wasn’t a constraint.
“It’s more things that are on-site and parked at different locations that we have to be careful (of),” Behnken said. “We are a commercial launch solution here. We don’t have the kind of national priority. They don’t adjust the range in order to manage around us. It’s a self-funded demo.
“As a commercial launch from a commercial provider, like Firefly, we have to be good stewards of the use of the military base and what’s coming up.”
Behnken declined to go into detail about exactly how much Lockheed Martin had invested into this mission, but said that the “pathfinding nature” of the spacecraft’s development through their Gateway Center has costs associated with that, which are harder to break out.
“We didn’t necessarily do everything associated with the missions to get to the lowest price point,” Behnken said. He added that “There were other objectives of the pathfinding nature,” which affected the cost.
LM 400 makes its debut
The payload of the ‘Message in a Booster’ mission was the LM 400 Technology Demonstration (Tech Demo). The launch of this hardware was part of the company’s strategy of “show more, tell less” for rolling out new capabilities to its government and civilian customers.
“The LM 400 Tech Demo is the next in a series of tech demos that Lockheed has had that are self-funded,” Behnken said on April 7. “It’s a series of missions that are specifically set up to demonstrate that the technology that we have is maturing and is ready for insertion into programs of record.”
Behnken said the LM 400 Tech Demo that launched onboard the Alpha rocket on Tuesday was considered the “low-power version,” but noted that they have a high-power variant that’s in development as well.
As advertised, the full LM 400 mid-sized, multi-mission satellite bus will be capable of accommodating up to 1,100 kg (2,425 lbs) and is able to operate in geostationary Earth orbit (GEO), medium Earth orbit (MEO) or low Earth orbit (LEO). Behnken said Lockheed Martin already has a contract for the first LM 400 for a classified customer.
“We’re really excited to get on-orbit flight heritage delivered for that program of record,” Behnken said of that undisclosed customer’s mission. He added that they’ve also had some other government interest in the full LM 400 satellite bus, but said Lockheed Martin plans to pitch it for future procurement opportunities as well.
The LM 400 Tech Demo was designed to operate for a roughly 30-day mission during which it was meant to showcase day-in-the-life operations.
“On orbit, it’s going to be a little bit of an interesting mission because we’re really focused on trying to get the full lifetime experience of the spacecraft on a relatively accelerated timeline,” Behnken said. “That will include, of course, the launch, it will include the traditional initialization that you need to do with a spacecraft. That will be done autonomously for this LM 400 mission.
“And then once it’s on orbit and operating, it’ll go through a series of establishing communications, demonstrating a series of spacecraft maneuvers. It will exercise our reconfigurable SmartSat software architectures.”
Had the LM 400 Tech Demo deployed as intended, the spacecraft was designed to perform a controlled de-orbit maneuver following the final communications with ground teams.
Lockheed Martin sought to demonstrate not only the capabilities of the satellite bus, but also the production pipeline around the spacecraft from manufacturing through vehicle integration. The LM 400 came from Lockheed Martin’s Ignite, what Behnken described as the “innovation engine” within the company.
The LM 400 Tech Demo was manufactured in Lockheed Martin’s Gateway Center, described as a “state-of-the-art, multi-level security satellite production facility.” Once on orbit, it will be controlled by the company’s COSMIC Cloud-enabled, Multi-Mission Operations Center in Waterton, Colorado.
Along for the development process has been the U.S. Space Force’s Space System Command’s Space Safari office, which was stood up in June 2021. Space Safari was designed with the purpose of being able to respond to “high-priority, urgent space needs by rapidly acquiring, integrating and executing missions in support of USSPACECOM requirements and other combatant commander needs,” according to Space Systems Command.
“They’ve been along with us for the ride as a training opportunity, which has been really exciting,” Behnken said. “Fundamentally, as we execute these demonstration missions, probably the most critical element is ensuring that we get customer feedback in terms of the execution. And so, having someone, like Space Safari, shoulder-to-shoulder with our team as we work through the preparation of the vehicle gives us that valuable feedback.”
He said the fully realized LM 400 is designed for a variety of mission applications and is “particularly well-suited for proliferated constellations, whether that be military, civilian or commercial customer needs.”
