Watch Firefly Launch Their Alpha Rocket To Orbit For The First Time!

Firefly Aerospace is the next private rocket company that aims to achieve orbit with its second launch attempt of their brand new Alpha launch vehicle. Alpha will lift off from Vandenberg Space Force Base, USA, and targets a 300 km low Earth orbit (LEO), in which it will deploy multiple payloads. On board of the FLTA002 To The Black mission will be multiple CubeSats and PicoSats, with most of them being copies of satellites that were lost during the failure of Firefly’s FLTA001 DREAM launch.
Check out our Prelaunch Preview to learn more about this mission! everydayastronaut.com/flta002...
00:00 - Intro
54:50 - Tim begins hosting
1:54:10 Lift off (2:46:21 / 3:16:49 / 13:17:48 replay),
1:56:30 MECO / stage separation
1:57:20 Fairing separation
2:01:25 SECO
2:09:03 Tim gets a champagne
3:23:02 Engine relight
3:25:03 Payload deployment
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[@EverydayAstronaut]

Replay of liftoff cameras here- 3:16:49 / 13:17:48, we didn’t lose a single bit from our end to the cloud, somehow the hand off from Teradek Core to KZbin dropped right at the most critical time. Needless to say, if you want two Teradek Prism Flexes, check eBay… now to shop for something more reliable 🤦‍♂️

[@hrishikeshs2195]

uh it's 3:17:48 ( in ur comment and description its wrong, 13:17:48 )

[@sgauntt]

It wouldn’t be a Everyday Astronaut stream without dropping footage at the worst possible time 😜😜😜

[@bazoo513]

I just wanted to ask what happened to 8 seconds around T-00:02:30 and then dropouts in the worst moments continued. Tim, does this mean you can make a "digest" with all the most interesting footage intact?

[@markoconnell804]

Your years in the making was also needed for us seeing this. Thanks!

[@dougle03]

Not a great advert for Teradek. Over priced rubbish anyway, good riddance...

[@sebastianfletcher-taylor1024]

Absolutely brilliant! Huge congratulations to Firefly Aerospace! When my parents were born, Sputnik was launched on a less capable rocket 5 times the size with half the payload, at the limits of the capabilities of a superpower, and it shook the world to its core. You are a testament to the new era we live in.

[@rocketman1969]

This comment is deep

[@thedarkside13]

1:54:10 Lift off (3:16:49//3:17:48 replay), 1:56:30 Meco/stage separation, 1:57:20 Fairing separation, 2:01:25 Seco, 2:09:03 Tim gets a champagne 🍾🥂🎉, 3:23:02 Engine relight, 3:25:03 Payload deployment.

[@Kasmuller]

Meco

[@macTijn]

Spoilers! geez... ;-)

[@jamesnichols5163]

3:16:40 Replay of Liftoff (which wasn't shown live)

[@standapp9172]

2:50:21 There's an explosion or a lightning perhaps on the middle left, in the clouds below

[@gruawa015]

u mean 00:00:00 - 03:36:21 absolutly boring as fuuuu how can anyone sitting at home and watch at a rocket for 3 hours straight.

[@TomNook.]

That was so cute watching 2nd stage firing off with the booster tumbling down in night vision

[@StephenPaschall]

I'm sure "cute" is just the adjective the engineers behind it love having applied to their rocket. 😄

[@rhondaperrino1239]

My son is one of the engineers behind Alpha, I’ll make sure to tell him it was cute lol

[@rhondaperrino1239]

That’s my favorite adjective lol

[@gruawa015]

yeah cool, watching a video of a rocket standing still for about 2 and a half hours..... wow, not even the start was cool xD

[@thorn2808]

HUGE congrats to the team at Firefly! An amazing flight for an amazing rocket! Welcome to the flight club!

[@societalpreferences9182]

No

[@shepshep8654]

Welcome to the club Firefly! You did it. We are so proud of everyone who worked so hard. Great job well done. You're included everyday astronaut and team. Well done.

[@devindykstra]

Absolutely stellar job Firefly! It's not every day we can watch a brand new rocket achieve orbit for the first time. I'm so glad I was able to witness this moment.

[@SundayRide1204]

Texas!!! Have been following Firefly for years as i live 10 minutes away from their test site in Briggs, Texas. Wonderful!!

[@williamhastie5056]

Congrats Firefly! “Orbit achieved. Alpha is in the block” Tracking cam was superb! Clearly see staging and fairing sep. Lightning engine looked fantastic! Thanks for your coverage Tim. Best wishes from Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🚀

[@ab8jeh]

3:16:40 Launch replay. 3:23:00 Engine relight. 3:24:00 Amazing (+cube sat deploy).

[@seinfan9]

Glad I got to be a part of integrating and testing the avionics for the first stage for their first successful launch to orbit. Now I can put it on my resume lol.

[@tortysoft]

I have waited for 65 years for this - now they all come at once !

[@paulsto6516]

It has been an awesome couple of years.

[@TheVantriliquist13]

I worked with one of the launch directors/conductors for firefly so if he sees this, This is Jacob from Dynetics idk if you remember me I was gonna text you cause I thought I had your number haha but I didn't. So congrats man! You deserve it

[@SpaceTalk-Aero]

Congratulations 🎉 to alpha and firefly’s team for this launch!

[@miroslavmilan]

Great success! Congratulations Firefly! Just caught the end of the stream here in Europe.

[@mathdev3351]

Ayy!

[@tammymccaslin4787]

I watched all the scrubs but wasn’t able to watch last night. Thanks for making this available to see after the fact. Congrats Firefly!

[@user-zf1ol7op7y]

Congrats to Firefly! Monumental accomplishment for them! 👍

[@gordonicus4637]

Congratulations on a great job Firefly! Some telemetry on screen would be nice.😀

[@tarunantony1866]

This was one of my happiest launches to watch. Go tap off cycles, and Go Firefly!

[@MinedMaker]

Congrats to Firefly. Humanity only has a few companies and countries capable of putting payloads into orbit and Firefly is one of them!

[@mechmanspain4155]

Congratulations Firefly's team

[@snuffeldjuret]

I like this official unofficial stream or what to call it. It feels much more natural and honest, less forced and moderated.

[@CAGE-CODE_30LU7]

Congratulations Firefly... Tremendous Work!!!

[@ianeberly]

Epic! Huge congrats to Firefly and big thanks to Everyday Astronaut!

[@witchdoctor6502]

Congratz Firefly! Thank you Tim, shame about the weather. Hopefully next time the weather will be like in the day attempt so we can enjoy the 4K.

[@TheShadowKarl]

Big congrats to the Firefly team. That is a huge accomplishment. I hope we see a lot more from this company.

[@jimwithheld7217]

Tim: Add me to the list of those disappointed you talked over Mission Control a lot. So while I love what you have to say during periods with all the waiting, please let us hear Control, except of course if you can't by some agreements, e.g. if you are prevented from taking audio in the event of mission failure or some such arrangement, as a condition of being allowed the feed etc.

[@EverydayAstronaut]

Unfortunately we had issues in my ears where I couldn’t always hear when they were talking and other times we couldn’t air it. We did the best we could. Would love to have done better

[@jimwithheld7217]

@@EverydayAstronaut Thanks Tim.

[@RWBHere]

Thanks Tim. Beautiful job, and congratulations to Firefly. 🙂👍 Two ways to improve your coverage of live events significantly are 1) to speak more slowly. US accents can be very difficult even for native English people to understand, so i must be even more difficult for people who don't speak English as their first language. 2) Stay quiet for much longer and let your audience hear both the rocket and Mission Control audio. Mission Control transmissions might only need explaining when obscure abbreviations and jargon are used. Keep up the excellent work! You are appreciated by over a million Subscribers, and millions more people.

[@brettpatching]

Totally agree with you that Tim should let Mission Control tell the story next time. I actually think Tim gives Mission Control more space in other launch coverages, so perhaps this was overeagerness as the official feed provider ...

[@pipersall6761]

Thank you Tim for bringing these views to us! And CONGRATULATIONS FIREFLY!!!!! The crew of Serenity would be so proud! :-) Looking forward to many more of your trips into the Black from now on!

[@roberthowley3407]

Congratulations to the Firefly team! Some beautiful video on the replays! And thank you to Tim and Everyday Astronaut as always!

[@Liverpoolfan08]

Liftoff 1:54:12 Max q 1:56:06 Stage one sep 1:56:40 Ses 1:56:42

[@kitt44kt]

Thanks very much ! Saved me having to listen to Tim for 3 hours 😀

[@andrewkeefe1517]

Great job by the Firefly team. Very happy for them

[@Night_Wolf]

Huge Congratulations to Firefly Team 🔥😍🖤

[@michaelhopf3249]

Great Firefly coverage, thanks a lot Tim!!

[@formolzinho]

And Firefly is part of the very very exclusive "Orbital Club". Congratulations to everyone involved. Space is very hard;

[@Noelpv]

Congratulations Firefly.. You nailed it

[@pgamerminecraftgarrysmodro7643]

2:01:33 orbit achieved

[@sugar_ltd]

their onboard feeds are spectacular. well done to them

[@brettallenthomas]

Inspiring launch... congrats to the whole team at FireFly...

[@mathdev3351]

First successful launch of firefly congrats! And best chat ever!

[@Xerethane]

2:47:58 Looks to be over Africa and I'm pretty sure that's the Okavango river delta, (a huge wildlife reserve) in Botswana. Very very cool.

[@junbead9614]

Congrats Firefly !! Go Alpha!

[@dnevill]

What a great launch. Thanks Tim and the team for the fantastic coverage as always!

[@madlynx3758]

Congratulations Firefly, Job well done.

[@pipersall6761]

Tim, there isnt much you can say that is more important than the LC chatter coming from whatever launch you cover. I really enjoy your commentary and I appreciate all the control chatter you allow us to hear. Thank you for all you do.

[@EverydayAstronaut]

Some of what you heard on air you weren’t supposed to hear and vice versa. We needed a better system of knowing what we can / cannot air because it was a bit backwards. I didn’t know if I was speaking over them sometimes

[@d33w]

Congrats Firefly!

[@johnhartzler3089]

I love your comments toward the end, that you're "the person". We all come here for the same reason. Your genuine enthusiasm and excitement that all of us share

[@jimwithheld7217]

In terms of the drop right on T0, I was thinking maybe the video compression/processing unit(s) might be able to handle the 4K feeds when nothing much is going on, but maybe during the very high data rates of the changing video frames at T0, with such massive changes to light levels and frame content etc, maybe the units maxed out the data bandwidths or something, so did some kind of buffer flush and reset, or some such thing. But to be clear, I'm making wide guesses, as one possible reason why it was right on T0.

[@tobias6484]

Might be a decent guess... however it had Bitrate issues and buffering well before liftoff too even when not a lot was happening. It just kept buffering every now and then. Might have also been just bad timing. Needless to say it's a very pricey yet unreliable kit

[@brianmcginley7215]

I think you could be spot on. Prior to launch the content is a black sky and a static rocket, and then at T=0 when it lifts off, all the smoke and flame makes compressing a 4K stream very hard for any codec indeed. Things like water / fire / smoke move fairly randomly so in video you need a HIGH bitrate to cope with that and i think you're right. It's simply too much of a coincidence that when the image switched to "complex and lots of frame-to-frame changes" the whole thing glitched out. Tim is now selling his 2 Teradek decoder/encoders and going to go a different route. I'd have expected more from Teradek for a US$2,800 piece of equipment! (TWO of them!).

[@MrJoegotbored]

Way to go Firefly! I'm looking forward to watching the next launch.

[@MrTrueshoe]

Wow that was epic ! Huge congratulations to the Firefly team!! I can’t wait to see your next video with him! That was one of my favorites…

[@conlethbyrne4809]

So delighted for Mark Cussack & All the team of Firefly congrats & great job by Tim in 4k. I hope you guys partyed. It's just as important for all companies to be successful in space for all of us. Happy Day's from Eire.🤩👍💚

[@TexanUSMC8089]

Firefly did it! Well done from South Texas.

[@liamspence9763]

That's incredible!! Absolutely LOVE the payload deployment footage too, that was really really cool to see!

[@visionedmad88]

You don't normally get to see SS-second ignition due to the payload. This was actually kind of a treat!

[@richardmattocks]

Fantastic! Huge congrats to all concerned!

[@rosswarren436]

Thanks to you and Firefly Aerospace for providing great coverage. CONGRATULATIONS to them! An amazing success on just their 2nd try. I know a LOT of effort went into this, so hat's off to all those involved in making it so. Bodes well for their future! Looking forward to Firefly Aerospace offering some Firefly Aerospace and Alpha merch, like T-shirts and hats.

[@milwman1958]

Nice Tim great show!!! Scott

[@sonnynguyen2653]

Congratulations to everyone.The hard work paid off🎉🎊🍻

[@paddygora8413]

That was fantastic. Great job Firefly & TDEA. Hope all @ FF feel as good as they should

[@MayuriK_it]

Yeeee, I'm very happy for the Firefly team! Congrats to all and welcome to space!

[@emana6553]

Congrats to Firefly. You have the fire, keep on flying.

[@pahg]

great launch. beautiful viewing!

[@kundaliniyogi11]

Great coverage , Wow , they are doing it , quick turnaround 🙌

[@ryanbarton72]

This is one of the coolest things I have ever seen, I been watching all the build up to this, the touring and interviews. But to see it all happen and work, super congrats and just some of the greatest work ever achieved by these people"Team FireFly!" Very very emotional to see this larger than life things happen, please continue to do great things like this we need more great stories like this so bad.

[@tortysoft]

Great stuff - everyone !

[@Real28]

Couldn't stay up but CONGRATS FIREFLY!

[@Zahidulhasan]

Great success! Congratulations Firefly! Rocketlab got a solid competitor at-last.

[@motomuso]

Good show Tim! And that parade footage outro gets me every time.

[@tylerhackner9731]

Awesome and brilliant! Amazing

[@SEVENISTHEMAN7]

Thank you for sharing the excitement Tim!

[@SabbirImon]

Congratulations Firefly

[@brewski9973]

2:47:00 I DID help build this rocket and it truly is amazing to see

[@ConcealedCourier]

Firefly.. got it up.👍(into orbit)

[@iambrian769]

Enjoyed This From The Caribbean 🇻🇨

[@CoryDAnimates]

Happy LaunchTober!

[@dawnbasden2071]

Thank you, Tim! I thoroughly enjoyed your information and commentary.

[@yodaco]

finally happened. good stuff

[@Dasycottus]

Monumental achievement for the second time off the pad. Way to go, guys! I suspect there are still kinks to work out before full commercial flight, but I'm sure many happy tears were shed

[@TheMeslava]

That view of the earth with that wide angle was AMAZING,... yet kinda felt terrifying in a wonky way, because it's like I haven't seen the earth in that light. It also really shows the speed of the spacecraft in orbit is no joke..

[@darringreen8630]

Anyway, yes, congrats to all of the Firefly team. Second time is a charm for them.

[@chrismullin9437]

I don't think most people realize that the amount of energy needed to reach the Karman line is only 2% of the energy needed to reach orbit. 98% of the energy is kinetic at 17,000 mph.

[@jimwithheld7217]

Oh: And most important: Well done Firefly!

[@jimklem691]

Really happy for fire fly very cool

[@patygrover]

Congra to the firefly team, go rock.

[@markdudar6632]

Fantastic job congratulations

[@fredstevens129]

Someone tell Astra that this is how it's done. Real management = real results.

[@stevealexiou492]

BRAVO BEAUTIFUL CONTAGIONS

[@MattHumanPizza]

Good job

[@snuffeldjuret]

I like the themed outro music fitting the context :).

[@dawnbasden2071]

Thanks!

[@iamaduckquack]

The quality is so clean for being so dark!

[@scorpio6587]

Beautiful!

[@Uncle_Yukon]

Enthusiasum is important, that is part of who you are Tim.

[@markoconnell804]

Your voice overs are great!

[@mikethinks]

Sweet launch

[@patygrover]

Good job everyday astronaut too God Bless you.

[@wrxsti1987]

THAT 🚀 JUMPED OFF THE PAD. AFTER THEY 🔥🕯

[@MasterOfInfinity]

Congratulations!

[@visionedmad88]

Congrats!

[@pj8593]

Great job