The company-developer of rocket and space technology Firefly Aerospace Inc., owned by Ukrainian businessman Maxim Polyakov, reported on September 3 that the flight of the Alpha rocket was interrupted according to security protocols.
"The explosion of the Alpha rocket of Firefly Aerospace was controlled. Its flight was terminated by the Space Launch Delta 30 team of the Vandenberg Space Forces Base after fixing a deviation in the flight path," the company told Interfax — Ukraine.
According to representatives of the developer, the rocket flight was interrupted from the Space Launch Delta 30 control center due to an anomaly.
The fact that the Firefly Aerospace launch vehicle exploded during a test launch in California was reported earlier in the same day. Then the details and causes of the incident were not specified.
Earlier on Friday, the chief designer for satellite construction of the private space company Success Rockets, Alexander Shaenko, told Izvestia that the Alpha launch vehicle was unintentionally destroyed due to deviations during a test launch. He also suggested that the flight parameters of the rocket were initially abnormal. We are talking about the fact that it was not gaining speed as quickly as planned.
In turn, the US space forces of the Vandenberg Air Force Base, from which the launch was carried out, indicated that the military themselves blew up the rocket.
Firefly Aerospace is a private American company, was established in 2014 in Texas. The company is developing a new generation of light class PH family. In Dnipro, Firefly Aerospace has its own R&D center and a workshop for experimental production of small rocket assemblies with subsequent laboratory testing.
As noted, work on Alpha has been underway since 2014. The rocket belongs to the light category of launch vehicles and at the same time is the largest representative of its class: so, its height is estimated at 29 m.