The American private company Firefly Aerospace, owned by entrepreneur Maxim Polyakov from Ukraine, announced the installation of its ultra-light oxygen-kerosene rocket Alpha at the launch pad at the Californian air force base Vandenberg. The installation process was also shown in the photos.

“Today, on the 60th anniversary of the first manned space walk, we have fully installed Alpha and verticalized it on the Firefly launch pad in Vandenberg. We’ll be doing a static fire test soon before our first launch! “, – the company said on Twitter. A little later, a GIF animation was published, supplemented with the words: “4 years of hard work of the team Firefly shrunk in 4 seconds. Watch the animation of yesterday’s Alpha setup! ».

Firefly Aerospace planned to launch Alpha into space in 2020, but the situation with COVID-19 and other difficulties confused all plans – now the company is confident that 2021 will be key in its development. CEO Tom Markusic, according to his recent interview with Space, spends half of his time preparing for the spring launch and half of his time on the next big round of investment.

The money can come from public or private sources depending on the interest. At the end of 2020, according to CNBC, Maxim Polyakov poured about $ 160 million into Firefly through his own company Noosphere Ventures. Now the company hopes that the successful launch of Alpha will attract the attention of investors to the company and will quickly move on to the operational phase and the creation of the next generation of space technology. …

One of the differences between the Alpha and other rockets, according to Firefly, is its more crack- and leak-resistant fuel tanks built from composite materials using carbon fiber. The rocket, as the developers expect, will be capable of launching up to 1 ton of payload into low-earth orbit and up to 630 kg into sun-synchronous orbit. Firefly now has 325 employees, up from 200 about a year ago.