After six months of preparation following its last flight, Firefly successfully launched the Alpha rocket on its fifth mission. After deciding to stand down from a July 2 launch attempt while teams evaluated and tested the systems responsible for aborting the launch on Monday, July 1, Firefly took off at 9:04 PM PDT on July 3 (4:04 UTC on July 4).
The mission, named Noise of Summer, launched eight CubeSats to a Sun Synchronous Orbit (SSO) from Space Launch Complex-2W (SLC-2W) at Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSFB) in California. NSF is providing livestream production services to Firefly, with the stream starting at T-30 minutes and available on the NASASpaceflight YouTube channel.Â