In a nutshell: Firefly Aerospace'south Blastoff rocket lifted off on its inaugural flight on Thursday evening, arcing over the California coast towards the Pacific. Only but after reaching supersonic speeds, it began flipping and spinning and was terminated remotely for safety.

The Blastoff rocket is (or was) a two-stage, 29-meter tall small-scale-satellite delivery system designed to deliver a 1,000 kg payload to depression earth orbit, or 630 kg to sun-synchronous orbit. Firefly plan to fly an Alpha rocket twice a month at a per-launch cost of $15 million.

Thursday's flight, posthumously referred to as a test flight, began slightly due north of Los Angeles at the Vandenberg Infinite Force Base at 6:59 pm local time. The rocket did accept some working satellites aboard, merely only for test purposes. It lifted off without a hitch.

Footage shows that well-nigh two minutes into the Alpha'southward flight, the rocket slowly starts tipping downwards. It then flips, which would've put enormous pressure on its body. Yous can meet some debris suspension off equally flames begin to encapsulate the rocket's boosters.

Later on some other violent rotation, the rocket explodes spectacularly.

The Space Force'due south Space Launch Delta 30 unit confirmed that the explosion was the intended consequence of the in-flying termination arrangement, which they activated at 7:01 pm. The explosion eliminated the risk of the out-of-control Alpha crashing into a populated area.

Some droppings can be spotted escaping the explosion, simply it's reported to have fallen into the sea. In that location weren't any injuries.

Vandenberg Launch Control Heart

Firefly reflected on the flight positively in their press release: "Firefly'due south Kickoff Test Flight Lasts More than Than 2 Minutes, With Successful Liftoff And Progression To Supersonic Speed." I don't retrieve everyone would agree that liftoff and lasting two minutes qualifies as success, but I'm glad that Firefly got its needs met.

They say that their engineers are already combing through the telemetry gathered during the flight to work out what went wrong. They're being joined by teams from the Vandenberg Space Force Base and the Federal Aviation Administration.

Until a cause tin can exist determined, the Blastoff model is sadly grounded -- although I doubt Firefly has a working spare anyhow.