Firefly Aerospace
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Firefly Aerospace is an American private aerospace company. It develops small- and medium-lift launch vehicles for commercial launches to orbit. Firefly Aerospance is based in Cedar Park, Texas. The company was formed when the assets of the former company Firefly Space Systems were bought by EOS Launcher in March 2017. It was then renamed Firefly Aerospace. Firefly's stated purpose is to increase access to space.
History
[change | change source]Firefly Space Systems began as a startup in January 2014. In November 2014, Firefly moved from Hawthorne, California to Cedar Park, Texas.
In March 2017, the company went bankrupt. Then it started again as Firefly Aerospace by Noosphere Ventures, who bought out the assets of former Firefly Space Systems.
On May 17, 2018, Firefly Aerospace opened a Research and development (R&D) center in the city of Dnipro, Ukraine. Even before the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the future of the Firefly R&D center in Ukraine was uncertain; after the invasion started, the Dnipro factory was bombed and many of the Ukrainian engineers either joined the army or fled the country. The United States government asked Noosphere to sell its part of ownership in the company. In February, 2022 Noosphere said it would do so.
In August 2022, Northrop Grumman announced that it had contracted Firefly Aerospace to build the first stage for its Antares rocket. Northrop Grumman states that the new first stage substantially increases the mass capability of Antares.
On September 14, 2023, Firefly successfully launched the Alpha rocket on its first mission for the United States Department of Defense, placing a spacecraft for Millenium Space into orbit and demonstrating rapid response launch for the United States Armed Forces.
In 2024, it was announced that Firefly would compete for small satellite launch contracts with the United States Department of Defense.
Blue Ghost is a class of lunar landers designed at Firefly's Cedar Park facility to meet the updated NASA requirements for a Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) lunar lander.
On 15 January 2025, Blue Ghost Mission 1, the first Firefly lander, launched on a Falcon 9 Block 5 launch vehicle. It landed successfully on the Moon on 2 March 2025. [1]