Fireflys

Firefly Aerospace sent its Alpha rocket to orbit this morning, with the company carrying a payload from Lockheed Martin to space. Today’s launch marks the fourth-ever flight of Firefly’s Alpha rocket. The rocket was carrying Lockheed’s demonstrator payload, called the Electronically Steerable Antenna (ESA) technology demonstrator, to low Earth orbit. From there, the Lockheed Martin payload should have been deployed. For that mission, Firefly had just 24 hours to complete final launch preparations, encapsulate the payload and mate it to the rocket.