Mission Reports

Firefly Aerospace says teams will try again Sept. 29 to launch its second Alpha rocket from California after scrubbing back-to-back launch attempts due to a helium pressure issue and unfavorable wind conditions.

Ground teams will try to stabilize the motion of NASA’s small CAPSTONE scouting satellite and rescue the $30 million mission on the way to the moon, following a problem Sept. 8 that sent the spacecraft into a tumble and caused controllers to temporarily lose contact with the probe, officials said Monday.

The suborbital rocket developed by Jeff Bezos’s space company Blue Origin suffered its first launch failure Monday, when the main engine on the New Shepard booster appeared to cut out about a minute after liftoff from West Texas. The crew capsule, which carried NASA-funded experiments but no people, safely landed under parachutes after firing an abort motor to escape the stricken booster.

Firefly Aerospace scrubbed a launch attempt Monday for its second Alpha rocket due to high winds at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The company called off an earlier launch attempt Sunday to examine a drop in helium supply pressure on the second stage. The next try to launch the Alpha rocket will be no earlier than Sept. 19.

These photos show Firefly Aerospace’s second Alpha rocket as it was raised on its launch pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Sept. 10, and again on Sept. 12 after the first launch attempt for the mission. Photographers captured these views as Firefly prepared the rocket for a planned test flight carrying seven small satellites into orbit.

A year after an early engine shutdown cut short an inaugural test flight, Firefly Aerospace’s second Alpha launcher is scheduled to take off Sunday from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on a demonstration mission to place seven small satellites into orbit.