Firefly Aerospace has delayed the debut of its upgraded Alpha Block 2 rocket to the fourth quarter of 2026 and trimmed the year's total Alpha cadence to three flights, chief executive Jason Kim told investors on the company's second-quarter earnings call.
FLTA008 Slides Into Q4
Alpha Flight 8 — the first vehicle to fly in the Block 2 configuration — is now expected in Q4 alongside a second Alpha mission, Kim said, with an even later slot possible for Flight 9. "We are preparing for acceptance testing of Alpha in the next few weeks, followed by delivery to Vandenberg, static fire, payload integration and then launch," he added. Flights 10 and 11 are already flowing through the production line, and Firefly says it has sold most of its 2027 manifest, boosted by an extended multi-launch agreement with Lockheed Martin and a second hypersonic Alpha task order from an undisclosed customer.
Block 2 Answers An Anomaly And An Explosion
The Block 2 upgrade is Firefly's fix for both the April 2025 in-flight anomaly on Alpha Flight 6 — attributed to a booster rupture after stage separation — and the September acceptance-test explosion at the company's Briggs, Texas facility. The redesigned vehicle is seven feet taller to fit larger liquid-oxygen tanks, uses in-house avionics and batteries, and adds stronger carbon composite structures. R&D expense climbed $25.8 million year over year in the second quarter, driven largely by the Block 2 ramp.
Eclipse And Antares 330 Track Toward 2027
Alongside Alpha, Firefly said its Miranda engine — the reusable core for the medium-lift Eclipse rocket being developed with Northrop Grumman — has now cleared more than 150 hot-fire tests, with a recent 226-second flight-like duty cycle test paving the way for qualification. Eclipse shares a first stage with the Antares 330 booster set to fly Cygnus resupply missions to the International Space Station. Firefly also confirmed it is bringing Launch Complex 3C at Sweden's Esrange Space Center online for a first flight in 2028, and continues to compete with a small crop of alternative launch providers hoping to break SpaceX's grip on U.S. medium-lift.
Reporting based on coverage from Spaceflight Now, Payload and Firefly's SEC filings.