The first test flight of the missile of the American-Ukrainian company Firefly Aerospace ended unsuccessfully
The launch vehicle created by the American company Firefly Aerospace, which belongs to the Ukrainian entrepreneur M. Polyakov, collapsed during its first test flight, which took place the day before.
As reported on the Falcon 9 Block Twitter page, during its first real flight, Firefly Aerospace encountered unusual equipment behavior that led to the destruction of the rocket.
New launch vehicle and its first unsuccessful tests
The company's engineers have been working on a new light-class launch vehicle, named Alpha, since 2014. The Alpha rocket, although it belongs to the light class, is at the same time the largest of all existing analogues. So the height of the rocket is a considerable 29 meters.
After all the ground tests for the first test flight, the rocket was prepared at the launch site located at Vanderberg Air Force Base, which is located in the state of California.
The engines were launched at 21:59 local time on Thursday (04:59 Moscow time on September 3). The flight lasted approximately 2.5 minutes, after which the rocket, which had already reached supersonic speed, exploded in the air. According to preliminary data, the problem arose in the first stage of the rocket.
So, according to the idea of the engineers, during the first flight, the rocket was supposed to put a load weighing 93 kilograms into orbit. And in the future, the company plans to launch into orbit a payload weighing one ton to an altitude of 300 km or 630 kg to an altitude of 500 km.
But first, engineers need to figure out the reasons for the first test failure and eliminate them.
Well, we wish the new company good luck in their difficult business and we will be watching with interest the further, I hope, already successful test flights of the Alpha rocket.
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