WASHINGTON \u2014 Firefly Aerospace says it is seeing strong interest in its launch vehicles and is ramping up production, but those efforts have yet to translate into an increased launch rate.<\/p>\n
Firefly executives said in an Aug. 11 earnings call that production of its Alpha launch vehicle is at an \u201call-time high\u201d as development continues of its larger Eclipse vehicle to meet what they said is strong commercial and government interest in space access.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t stress enough that the demand for launch capacity is amplified right now. We\u2019ve never seen launch capacity so constrained,\u201d Jason Kim, chief executive of Firefly, said during the call. \u201cThat not only helps the demand for Alpha, but also for Eclipse.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the company is working to increase production of Alpha, its small launch vehicle capable of placing up to one ton into low Earth orbit. \u201cWe have so much hardware on the floor. The production is at an all-time high, so that gives us really, really high confidence that we\u2019re going to continue to pump out Alphas at rate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Actual launches, though, lag production. Alpha has launched only seven times, dating to September 2021<\/a>. Its most recent launch was in March<\/a>, a return-to-flight mission after a failure on an April 2025 launch.<\/p>\n The company has been working on an upgraded version of Alpha, Block 2, that stretches both stages and improves several vehicle subsystems. In a May earnings call, Kim said that the next Alpha launch, Flight 8, would be the first Block 2 launch and was scheduled for \u201clate this summer.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n In this earnings call, though, Kim said the Flight 8 launch is now expected in the fourth quarter. He said the company was planning one more launch after Flight 8 this year, versus the two he projected in May.<\/p>\n He was also vague about launch plans for Alpha in 2027. \u201cA majority of our manifest for 2027 has already been sold out,\u201d he said, but declined to say how many missions were on its manifest for the year. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to talk about guidance for 2027,\u201d he said when asked about the company\u2019s projected launch cadence for next year.<\/p>\n That slow pace of launches has, at a minimum, delayed some business. Firefly announced in October 2024 that it won a launch contract from True Anomaly for three responsive launch missions using Alpha<\/a>, starting with the Victus Haze mission for the Space Force. However, True Anomaly\u2019s Jackal spacecraft that it built for Victus Haze instead launched in May on a SpaceX rideshare mission<\/a>.<\/p>\n Kim said that the launch contract with True Anomaly remains in place after the Space Force told True Anomaly to launch Jackal on another vehicle for Victus Haze. The Alpha launch intended for that mission is \u201csaved for a later date per the Space Force direction,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n