On Monday, May 4, 2026, Johnathon Caldwell, vice president and general manager of strategic and missile defense systems at Lockheed Martin Space, part of Lockheed Martin, announced on his LinkedIn profile that the company had entered into cooperation with Seagate Space and Firefly Aerospace.
Images: Seagate Space
The trilateral agreement in support of national security brings together Lockheed Martin as a major defense and space industry player, Seagate Space as the designer of the Gateway-S sea-based launch platform, and Firefly Aerospace as the designer of the Alpha light launch vehicle. It is intended to accelerate the ability to launch payloads into space from a floating spaceport. The cooperation will focus on mission application concepts and in-flight demonstration projects.
The partnership builds on foundations already existing between two of the three partners. On April 6 this year, Seagate Space announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Firefly Aerospace concerning the integration of Gateway-S and Alpha.
Sea-based launch platforms can position themselves in international waters at latitudes and azimuths inaccessible to fixed spaceports, which is of great importance for the orbital mechanics of certain payloads used for national security purposes. A launch site that can be moved to the right location for a given mission—instead of having to accept orbital limitations imposed by a fixed geographic position – gives mission planners flexibility that has real operational value for time-sensitive national security requirements. Combined with the Alpha launch vehicle, designed for rapid integration and launches on compressed timelines, the platform offers something the traditional launch industry has struggled with: the ability to send a payload to a specific orbit from a flexible location, on a tactically relevant schedule.
Alpha is a two-stage, light launch vehicle powered by liquid propellant, whose first launch took place in 2022. It can deliver payloads of around 1,000 kg to low Earth orbit, and launch preparations are expected to take weeks rather than many months, as is the case with other rockets.
Lockheed Martin Space’s specific contribution to the cooperation is based on its missile defense and targets portfolio – programs that include specialized expertise and experience in launching payloads into space, as well as target missiles for testing U.S. missile defense.
Mission success! Alpha Flight 7 achieved nominal performance and validated key systems ahead of our Block II configuration upgrade. This test flight also delivered a demonstrator payload for @LockheedMartin . Congratulations to the entire Stairway to Seven team! Read more:… pic.twitter.com/e7Sp0RqB9H
— Firefly Aerospace (@FireflySpace) March 12, 2026
Seagate Space and @Oceaneering have joined forces to advance the next phase of offshore launch.
This strategic relationship brings together Oceaneering’s decades of offshore expertise and spaceflight heritage with our first-of-class (via @ABSeagle) Gateway platform.
🔗below pic.twitter.com/8LuP9f8C9f
— Seagate Space (@Seagate_Space) April 23, 2026
Sea-Based Launch Platforms Around the World
Over the past several decades, several similar projects have been or are being developed around the world. The best known was Sea Launch, also known as Morskoy Start, involving contributions from the United States, Russia, Ukraine, and Norway. It operated from 1999 to 2014 and was based on a converted drilling platform from which Ukrainian Zenit-3SL rockets were launched. A total of 36 launches were carried out. The platform is currently in the Vladivostok area. There were plans to reactivate it, but the project has stalled.
Projects of this type are being developed in China: DeBo-3, a spaceport operating in the Yellow Sea, with its first launch in 2019, and Gravity-1 by Orienspace, with its first launch in 2024.
In the United States, The Spaceport Company carried out demonstrations of suborbital launches from a floating platform in the Gulf of Mexico in 2023 and is now working on fully orbital floating spaceports. Similar projects are being developed in Germany, including a plan for a floating spaceport in the North Sea for light rockets.
SpaceX purchased two drilling platforms, Phobos and Deimos, for launches and landings of the Starship super-heavy rocket, but the project was abandoned in 2023. Floating ASDS barges, Of Course I Still Love You and A Shortfall of Gravitas, are still used for landings of reusable Falcon 9 Block 5 stages. A similar solution, but only for landing, is used by Blue Origin: a platform called Landing Platform Vessel 1, known as Jacklyn, for recovering the first stage of the New Glenn rocket.
In addition, projects of this type are being considered by the U.S. Space Force, the European Space Agency, and various start-ups.