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Firefly launches world’s largest carbon fiber rocket into orbit on second try
Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha rocket has successfully reached orbit on its second try, cementing the company as the victor of a mostly unintentional race between three American NewSpace startups.
After weeks of delays and three aborted launch attempts on September 11th, 12th, and 30th, the second carbon-fiber Alpha rocket lifted off from its Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSFB) SLC-2W launch pad at 12:01 am PDT (07:01 UTC) on October 1st. According to Firefly, the resulting mission was a “100%…success”, indicating that it achieved all of the company’s objectives – an outcome far from guaranteed on the second flight of any orbital rocket.
In a familiar display, Alpha’s suborbital booster lifted the upper stage, fairing, and payload most of the way out of the Earth’s atmosphere within a few minutes. After a mechanical system pushed the two stages apart, the upper stage successfully ignited its lone Lightning engine, ejected the two-piece fairing (nose cone) protecting its payloads, and continued uphill for another five minutes before reaching a stable parking orbit around 250 kilometers (~160 mi) above Earth’s surface.
After successfully reaching orbit, Alpha’s upper stage even made it through a more than 90-minute coast phase and reignited for a brief second burn. Finally, Alpha managed to deploy all seven of the satellites it lifted off with. As a test flight, there was no guarantee that those payloads would end up anywhere other than the Pacific Ocean, so the successful deployment was likely a very pleasant surprise for all satellite operators involved in the mission.
Nicknamed “Into The Black” by Firefly, it was the company’s second Alpha flight and followed an unsuccessful attempt on September 3rd, 2021. During the rocket’s first launch, a loose cable caused one of its booster’s four main Reaver engines to fail almost immediately after liftoff, dooming the attempt. However, the rest of the booster fought for more than two minutes to keep the mission on track before a termination system destroyed the rocket, demonstrating otherwise excellent performance and gathering invaluable data and experience.
Firefly wasted no time putting that experience to good use. Compared to the first vehicle, the booster and upper stage for Alpha’s second flight sailed through preflight testing and completed their respective proof tests (a combined wet dress rehearsal and static fire) on their first tries. That smooth processing bodes well for the timing of Firefly’s third Alpha launch, although the company’s official accounts have strangely been almost silent after Flight 2’s success.
Soon after launch, third-party data showed that Alpha deployed its seven payloads into a 210 x 270 kilometer (130 x 170 mi) orbit. Firefly’s official launch page had stated that the target orbit was 300 kilometers (~185 mi) and called the second ignition of the upper stage a “circularization burn.” Given that the final orbit is far from circular and has an apogee a full 10% below that stated target, it wasn’t clear the rocket had performed exactly as expected. The orbit’s very low perigee means that the customer satellites Alpha deployed could reenter Earth’s atmosphere and burn up after a matter of weeks in space, rather than months or years.
But according to Bill Weber, who became CEO of Firefly less than a month before the launch, Alpha “deployed [Firefly’s] customer payloads at exactly the spot [the company] intended,” strongly implying that the strange final orbit was intentional.
Additionally, official footage Firefly released after the launch suggests that Alpha’s upper stage Lightning engine nozzle narrowly missed the booster’s interstage during stage separation. Had the drifting booster hit that nozzle, it would have likely caused the upper stage to begin tumbling and potentially ended the mission well before orbit. Thankfully, it didn’t, and it should be relatively easy to fix whatever caused the Alpha booster to begin slipping sideways so quickly after separation.
Alpha is the largest all-carbon-fiber rocket ever built. It stands 29.5 meters (~95 ft) tall, 1.8 meters (6 ft) wide, weighs 54 tons (~120,000 lb) fully fueled, and can produce up 81 tons of thrust (~180,000 lbf). Alpha can launch up to 1.17 tons ~(2600 lb) of useful cargo to low Earth orbit (LEO), making it the first successful entrant in a new and rapidly growing field of privately-developed rockets designed to launch 1-2 tons to orbit.
Coincidentally, Firefly found itself neck and neck with two other prospective US providers, Relativity Space and ABL Space. For several months, all three companies were aiming to successfully launch their one-ton-class rockets to orbit sometime in the late summer or early fall. But despite delays, Firefly – already more than a year ahead after its first launch attempt in 2021 – still beat Relativity and ABL Space to flight and did so successfully, securing itself a small but significant milestone in the history of private spaceflight.
The timeline for Relativity’s first 3D-printed Terran-1 rocket launch is no longer clear after a hurricane disrupted its preflight test campaign. ABL Space, meanwhile, has been forced to sit with its first RS1 rocket ready to launch for weeks while waiting on the FAA to complete paperwork and grant it a launch license. Had the FAA moved faster, it’s entirely possible that ABL Space could have launched before Firefly’s Alpha Flight 2, although the odds of success are much lower for RS1 during its debut. Pending that regulatory approval, ABL Space intends to launch RS1 out of Kodiak, Alaska as early as mid-October.
Firefly has yet to offer a substantial statement after the successful launch, which means that the company has provided no information about its next steps or next launch. Per prior statements, the company is working to upgrade its Texas factory to enable up to six Alpha launches in 2023.
Investor's Corner
Tesla’s flying Roadster just revealed something bigger than the car
Analysts say the Roadster demo puts a Tesla and SpaceX merger back on the table.
The Roadster unveiling near Waco ended Thursday night, and by Friday morning much of the investor reaction had less to do with the car than with who owns the rocket technology inside it.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said the event “puts the Tesla/SpaceX relationship on the table in a tangible way,” pointing to the propulsion, pressure vessel and control hardware sitting on a Tesla product. Gene Munster of Deepwater Asset Management called the demo “a ridiculous display of engineering” with “no commercial value” beyond embarrassing traditional automakers, though he said it showed Musk wants the two companies together.
The more specific forecast came a day earlier from Barclays. Analyst Dan Levy told clients a deal could be announced before Tesla’s annual meeting, which must happen by December 6, and that an announcement in late October or early November could make shareholder approval harder. Barclays expects SpaceX to be the buyer in an all stock deal, with Tesla holders receiving SpaceX shares at a premium, based on market values of roughly $2.1 trillion for SpaceX and $1.5 trillion for Tesla. If nothing lands around the meeting, the bank still sees an announcement within 6 to 12 months.
The Roadster demo just added more weight to merger speculations. Tesla’s demo used cold gas thrusters and pressure tanks of the kind SpaceX uses on Falcon 9, and Musk described the car as a collaboration between Tesla and SpaceX engineers, as we mentioned in our breakdown of the three Roadster configurations.
Musk has not publicly addressed a deal since the event, as far as we have seen. His most direct answer remains the one he gave at the All In Summit, when he said that with so much collaboration, “who can imagine what action one might take” without ruling anything out. Ives has held to a 2027 timeline since his March note, and Musk pushed back on the China piece of the speculation when ARK floated a year end announcement in August.
The next test is Tesla’s third quarter earnings call on October 21. However, we recall in July that Musk told analysts, “we can’t talk about combining companies and that kind of thing on an earnings call,” so a clear answer wouldn’t be expected.
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How Tesla’s Roadster fan system and thrusters are built to dominate the corners
Tesla’s Roadster uses fans, active wings and cold gas thrusters to create grip at any speed.
Tesla’s new Roadster is best known for flipping through the air in Texas, but the technology that matters most for a race track is the stuff that keeps it on the ground. Tesla’s Roadster page describes a multi-mode fan and ground sealing system that acts as a downforce generator, pulling air out from beneath the car. Tesla says it provides enough suction to hold the vehicle upside down, even when stationary.
That is the key difference from the wings and diffusers on a normal supercar. Conventional aero only makes downforce when the car is moving, and it grows with speed, so a car has the least grip in the slow corners and under hard braking. A fan system makes downforce at any speed. Tesla’s patent, which we covered last year, describes fans and deployable skirts that create sealed or partially sealed regions under the car, with the fans extracting air to lower the pressure and increase grip and stability.
Still processing this … the most unreal thing I’ve seen. https://t.co/HtEuvnkZjY
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 16, 2026
Tesla pairs that with active wings, a next generation steer by wire system and a Track Mode that lowers the car and changes the suspension, with high downforce and low drag settings for the circuit. To keep weight down, Tesla points to magnesium, titanium and carbon fiber, manual controls and a fixed seat position, which it says lets the car respond to driver inputs almost instantly.
Tesla Roadster: Three configs, one can fly, 0-60 in 0.8 seconds
The cold gas thrusters are the other half. On the Thrust version they sit at the rear and Tesla says they take the car from 0 to 60 mph in under 0.9 seconds, while the Rocket version adds perimeter thrusters for forward, upward and lateral rotational movement. Tesla says the all electric actuators make micro adjustments within a fraction of a second.
Roadster transforms in Track Mode
These aero features aren’t just for looks: they provide the best passive downforce package of any road car (approaching F1 levels!) with wing actuation driven by the @Tesla_Optimus actuator system https://t.co/AqrC4qUga9
— Tesla (@Tesla) October 16, 2026
Musk has been talking about records for years. In June 2019 he said, “We’re going to do things with the new Roadster that are kind of unfair to other cars.” That September, when a follower asked whether the Roadster would beat the Nürburgring production car record, he replied with one word, “Absolutely,” as we reported at the time. In February 2024 he said Tesla had “radically increased the design goals” for the car and that its sub one second 0 to 60 time would be “the least interesting part.”
There are caveats. Tesla has not published a lap time or a verified cornering figure, so the record talk is still a promise rather than a result. Tesla also says the car is not approved for public road use, and the thruster features are limited to the Rocket trim, which is invite only. Fan cars have also been banned or withdrawn before, and getting a sealed underbody to work on a rough public road is a harder problem than on a smooth track. The first real test will be an official lap at a circuit.
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Tesla Roadster: Three configs, one can fly, 0-60 in 0.8 seconds
Tesla’s Roadster comes in Performance, Thrust and Rocket versions, with a claimed 0-60 under 0.59 seconds.
Tesla finally showed the next generation Roadster on Thursday night, and the demo had more in common with a SpaceX test than a track lap. At an event outside Waco, Texas, near SpaceX’s McGregor site, the car used a mix of fans and cold gas thrusters to drive up a curved ramp until it was upside down, then flew off, flipped and landed on the pavement. “Well, it worked,” Elon Musk said. “Flying cars are real.”
The Roadster also hovered itself over a Cybercab, Cybertruck, Tesla Semi, Model Y and Model 3 while moving, and that Tesla showed it going 0 to 60 mph in one second. Musk said “this will be the actual car that’s on the roads” and that it “literally is just going to puff itself up” to perform the maneuvers whenever an owner wants. He called the result a collaboration between Tesla and SpaceX engineers that is “better than any James Bond car,” with Franz von Holzhausen and Lars Moravy on site.
Tesla published new mind-blowing stats for the car that replace the previous targets. The Performance version is road ready and seats two, with active aerodynamics and a multi-mode suction system, and Tesla lists 0 to 60 mph in under 1.6 seconds. The Thrust version is race ready, also seats two, and adds rear-mounted cold gas thrusters for a 0 to 60 time of under 0.9 seconds. The Rocket version is described as air ready, seats one, and uses perimeter-mounted thrusters for forward and upward acceleration plus lateral rotational movement.
| Configuration | Seats | 0 to 60 mph |
|---|---|---|
| Performance | 2 | under 1.6 s |
| Thrust | 2 | under 0.9 s |
| Rocket | 1 | under 0.59 s |
Tesla’s own description: “So…yes, it can fly.” It lists a 0 to 60 time of under 0.59 seconds for Rocket, a top speed of up to more than 230 mph, and range of more than 300 miles. Tesla has not yet given pricing in the information we have seen, but has reopened $50,000 reservations in the newly updated Tesla Roadster configurator. Production is planned for Giga Texas in 2027 or 2028, and Musk has said it would follow the demo by 12 to 18 months.
Every car on the road today is limited by one thing: tire grip
Roadster’s thruster system generates 4–5x the force the tires can.
More force on the same mass means significantly better acceleration – physics does the rest https://t.co/zdPRT2aKwZ
— Tesla (@Tesla) October 16, 2026
Tesla’s Roadster page adds more on how the car works. A multi-mode fan and ground sealing system pulls air from under the car, producing enough suction to hold it upside down even when stationary. Active wings, steer-by-wire with a yoke, and a Track Mode that lowers the car round out the driving setup. The cold gas thrusters use all-electric actuators for micro adjustments to stabilize the car in flight. Tesla says it cut weight with magnesium, titanium and carbon fiber, manual controls and a fixed seat position, and the exterior has hidden headlights, a full-length taillight and Ano White paint inspired by aerospace coatings. Inside are an Ultrawhite interior with gray microsuede, a center touchscreen and two smaller forward displays, and gold tinted glass modeled on spacesuit visors. Availability is tiered: Performance is by reservation, Thrust is a limited release, and Rocket is invite only. Tesla notes the car is not approved for public road use, and that Rocket is not available in all regions.
Tesla Roadster Highlights
- Aero and suction: a multi-mode fan and ground sealing system pulls air from under the car and can hold it upside down even when stationary. There are also active wings and a Track Mode that lowers the car.
- Controls and thrusters: steer-by-wire with a yoke. The cold gas thrusters use all-electric actuators for micro adjustments that stabilize the car in flight.
- Weight: magnesium, titanium and carbon fiber, manual controls and a fixed seat position.
- Design: hidden headlights, a full-length taillight, Ano White paint inspired by aerospace coatings, and gold tinted glass modeled on spacesuit visors.
- Interior: an Ultrawhite interior with gray microsuede, a center touchscreen and two smaller forward displays.
- Availability: Performance is by reservation, Thrust is a limited release, and Rocket is invite only.
- Road use: Tesla notes the car is not approved for public road use, and that Rocket isn’t available in all regions.
Musk has described the Roadster as “the best of the last of the human-driven cars,” and he has been open that it is a halo product. He said he is “not sure it moves the needle massively from a revenue standpoint,” and has warned that anyone whose top priority is safety should not buy it. Tesla reports third quarter earnings on October 21.
Roadster is a true pilot’s car: active aerodynamics, a multi-mode suction system & cold-gas thrusters
Exterior
– Concealed headlights, full-length taillight & flush-mounted surfaces for a minimalist, highly technical form– Super light wheels w/ thin spokes that reinforce structural strength when earthbound
– Ano White paint brings an aerospace-derived finish w/ UV & cryogenic protection, electrostatic dissipation & corrosion resistance
– Gold Glazed tinted glass mimicking the copper coating of spacesuit visors, w/ subtle titanium accents
— Tesla (@Tesla) October 16, 2026
Tesla’s flying Roadster just revealed something bigger than the car
How Tesla’s Roadster fan system and thrusters are built to dominate the corners
Tesla Roadster: Three configs, one can fly, 0-60 in 0.8 seconds
SpaceX reveals how its 1 Million AI satellite network will work and prevent space collisions
Elon Musk’s Boring Company lands a new Middle East deal, and Nashville is about to get faster
