Launches: Firefly makes 3rd try to launch load of CubeSats
Just like the big boys (NASA and SpaceX have both had repeated launch scrubs in September) Firefly has tried twice to get off the ground from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, both times pulling the plug before liftoff. Very early on Saturday morning (October 1, 2022), the Texas-based aerospace company will give it another go.
The next launch window opens at 12:01 a.m. PT (07:01 UTC), and the launch will be streamed live. The Everyday Astronaut has provided coverage of the first two attempts and will be on the air for the third try. You can use the link below to watch.
Firefly is calling the mission To The Black, and they describe it like this:
Alpha Flight 2: To The Black is Firefly’s second technology demonstration flight that will attempt to launch multiple satellites to low Earth orbit (LEO) from our launch site (SLC-2) at Vandenberg Space Force Base. Alpha will first insert into an elliptical transfer orbit, coast to apogee, and perform a circularization burn.
On board the Alpha will be 35 kg (77 lbs) of tiny CubeSat satellites created by both educational and commercial sources. The satellites will test new technology and gather data.
Firefly hopes to make the U.S.-built Alpha into a leader in small payload launches. If all goes as planned, the company could launch as often as once a month.
Bottom line: Firefly Aerospace will make another attempt to launch its Alpha rocket very early on October 1, 2022.
Award-winning reporter and editor Dave Adalian's love affair with the cosmos began during a long-ago summer school trip to the storied and venerable Lick Observatory atop California's Mount Hamilton, east of San Jose in the foggy Diablos Mountain Range and far above Monterey Bay at the edge of the endless blue Pacific Ocean. That field trip goes on today, as Dave still pursues his nocturnal adventures, perched in the darkness at his telescope's eyepiece or chasing wandering stars through the fields of night with the unaided eye.
A lifelong resident of California's Tulare County - an agricultural paradise where the Great San Joaquin Valley meets the Sierra Nevada in endless miles of grass-covered foothills - Dave grew up in a wilderness larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined, one choked with the greatest diversity of flora and fauna in the US, one which passes its nights beneath pitch black skies rising over the some of highest mountain peaks and greatest roadless areas on the North American continent.
Dave studied English, American literature and mass communications at the College of the Sequoias and the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has worked as a reporter and editor for a number of news publications on- and offline during a career spanning nearly 30 years so far. His fondest literary hope is to share his passion for astronomy and all things cosmic with anyone who wants to join in the adventure and explore the universe's past, present and future.
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