FireFly Aerospace FLTA006 (LM400) Launch Failure
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- Dillon Shropshire May 2nd 2025
On April 29th 2025 at 1337 UTC, FireFly Aerospace launched their Alpha rocket from SLC-2W at Vandenberg SFB.
The payload was a semi-secretive satellite for Lockheed Martin. (LM400)
Alpha was supposed to insert LM400 in a ~500 x 500km x 85.0 degree orbit.
Liftoff and Stage-1 ascent appeared to be clean and nominal, this was until stage separation. An energetic event was observed at T+2mins 36secs from ground tracking stations. This was approximately 1.5 seconds after the callout and visible confirmation of MECO (Main-Engine-Cutoff).
The current speculation is that Alpha's upper stage ignited its lightning engine inside of the interstage. This would have likely compromised both the interstage walls and the LOX tank, hence the energetic event.
Following this event, FireFly's official stream in collaboration with NSF showcases Stage-2 onboard views along with the callout of "Stage-2 ignition" and "chamber pressure nominal".
The live views confirmed this callout, except a noticeable aspect was missing, the vacuum-optimized Lightning engine nozzle was missing, presumably from the energetic event. A visible oscillation was also observed but quickly nullified.
Despite this obvious issue, the Lightning engine continued to power LM400 towards orbital velocities - there was, unfortunately, no telemetry read-out either because of customer requests or erroneous readouts. Lightning shut down at T+8mins 36secs, approximately 10 seconds after the pre-planned time.
Considering the absence of the efficient Vacuum nozzle, this extra burn time was to be expected, as a performance degradation in thrust output would occur as a result of losing the vacuum nozzle extension.
Initially, FireFly updated their social media with terminology suggesting Alpha reached orbit, just in a lower-than-expected orbit; they quickly revoked this posting.
A few hours later, FireFly updates their social media with the post below.
Following this update (which isn't as in-depth as I would wish) I tried to calculate a likely "orbit" solution that assumes it was at an altitude of 320km at Lightning shutdown and the point of re-entry was slightly North of Antarctica.
I came up with an orbit of 320 x -300km (Give or take on the perigee)
I supplied this information on my X account @dillonshrop06
