Rocket Updates: Relativity, Firefly and PLD Space Move Toward Launches
Relativity Space’s Terran 1 booster has arrived at Cape Canaveral in Florida in preparation for its maiden flight later this year.
Dedicated Mission: $12 million
First Stage: 9 Aeon engines
Second Stage: 1 Aeon engine
Maximum Payload:
1,250 kg to 185 km low Earth orbit
Nominal Payload:
900 kg to 500 km sun synchronous orbit
High Altitude Payload:
700 kg to 1200 km sun synchronous orbit
Firefly Aerospace has shipped both stages required for the second flight test of its Alpha booster from Briggs, Texas to Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The launch, which has been named To the Black, could occur in July.
First Stage: 4 Reaver 1 engines
Second Stage: 1 Lightning 1 engine
Payload
1,170 kg to low Earth orbit
Inclination: 28.5°
Altitude: 200 km
745 kg to sun synchronous orbit
Altitude: 500 km
PLD Space has its MIURA 1 single-stage suborbital rocket on the launch pad for tests.
First Stage: 1 TEPREL-B engine
Payload
100 kg to 150 km
2 responses to “Rocket Updates: Relativity, Firefly and PLD Space Move Toward Launches”
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Good luck to them all. We still don’t have a small rocket that is able to do rapid launch cadence in any meaningful sense, so there’s room for new entrants. Although Relativitys $12M a pop isn’t going to be sustainable
And for PLD, its way past due for Europe to diversify their industry a bit
Relativity isn’t depending on the sustainability of Terran-1, though as a higher-end expendable smallsat launcher, it stacks up passably well against its Firefly Alpha and ABL RS-1 competition. Development of the much larger, and completely reusable, Terran-R is already well underway.