Rocket Report: Soyuz soars, Firefly plans, SpaceX warns of European aid

Last Friday, Texas-based rocket company Firefly announced it had reached an agreement to develop manufacturing facilities and a launch site at the Cape Canaveral Spaceport in Florida. Firefly will build its launch facilities at Space Launch Complex 20, and it will also construct an expansive facility to assemble its Alpha (and eventually the larger Beta) rockets near the large Blue Origin plant in Florida's Exploration Park area. After SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft passed their flight readiness review, NASA cleared them for a 2:48am ET (07:48 UTC) launch on Saturday from Kennedy Space Center. Provided this test goes well (and after SpaceX conducts an in-flight test of the capsule's escape system), the first crewed mission into orbit could launch from Florida later this year.Soyuz rocket launches first six OneWeb satellites. The European rocket maker Ariane Group and the French space agency CNES announced the creation of an "acceleration platform" to speed development of future launch vehicles, Ars reports. The goal of this project is to build a multiple-engine first-stage rocket that launches vertically and lands near the launch site.It looks strikingly like a Falcon 9 ... Overall, while Europe does heavily subsidize its launch industry, it does so to avoid being beholden to non-European countries to get its assets into space.Test stand completed for Ariane 6 upper stage. On Tuesday, the German space agency announced the completion of a new test stand in the countryside near Stuttgart to support the new Ariane 6 rocket's upper stage. These are key tests that must happen early next year if the Ariane 6 rocket is to make its first spaceflight in 2020.March 2: Falcon 9 | Demo-1 commercial crew | Kennedy Space Center, Fla.