The pad exhales. Vapor claws at floodlights. Firefly Alpha Block 2 VICTUS HAZE Jackal launch 2026 is no PR stunt—it is a promise kept in darkness. A 24-hour fuse is already burning. Crews will haul the fairing across slick concrete, mate, fuel, and leap at the first window while the Jackal waits like a coiled blade.
Low Earth Orbit swallows secrets here. Weather murmurs nothing. The Range stands quiet. This is Vandenberg at its coldest: pure vector, no apology.
Firefly Alpha Block 2 is scrappy carbon and kerosene resolve. It lifts from the same pad that once growled with Titan muscle, now scrubbed clean for smaller, sharper appetites. Firefly Aerospace has yet to tattoo a perfect record across these skies—that only sharpens the edge. Every valve tick and LOX chill is audible. The stack feels almost intimate. Dangerous. Honest.
Jackal is not a passenger. It is a guest with orders. True Anomaly’s autonomous orbital vehicle will shadow a Rocket Lab National Security craft and spar in proximity, rehearsing decisions that can’t be unmade. The Alpha doesn’t ask for permission. It asks for propellant.
Space Systems Command holds the trigger. When the word lands, the clock detonates. Fairing transport turns into a sprint across fog-crusted SLC-2W. Fluids hiss. Batteries bite. Alpha’s Rutherford engines snarl rehearsal pulses that vibrate through bedrock.
There is no margin for theater. Jackal’s sensors will taste the void first, then decide what the next actor is allowed to do. Orbit becomes a room with no doors. By sunrise, the message will already be in transit—delivered not by policy, but by fire.