Firefly completes 226-second Miranda engine burn for Eclipse rocket
Firefly's Miranda engine cleared a 226-second flight-like burn, a milestone toward qualifying Eclipse's first stage.
what happened
Firefly Aerospace has completed more than 150 hot-fire tests of its kerosene-fueled Miranda engine, including one full-power burn lasting 226 seconds that swept power and mixture-ratio settings beyond a normal ascent profile, per NASASpaceflight. Miranda will power the seven-engine reusable first stage of Eclipse, Firefly's medium-lift rocket designed to deliver more than 16 metric tons to low Earth orbit; the company said the engine is now entering formal qualification testing ahead of Eclipse's first launch.
why it matters
Eclipse is Firefly's step up from the smallsat-class Alpha into medium-lift, competing for national-security and commercial payloads that need more capacity than Alpha offers. Miranda clearing qualification testing is a concrete gate on that timeline, though first-stage booster landings are expected to be deferred past the vehicle's initial flights.
signal-to-noise
quick facts
- Companies
- Firefly Aerospace
- Category
- product
- Impact
- noise
- SNR
- 3 / 5
- Event date
- 2026-08-16
- Published
- 2026-08-16 17:28 UTC