Firefly Aerospace, Based in Cedar Park, Secures Major Department of Defense Contract

The Cedar Park-based company Firefly Aerospace announced on Monday that it has secured a contract from the U.S. Defense Department to carry out an agile mission in orbit utilizing its spacecraft.

The mission is a component of the The Defense Innovation Unit, known as DIU, Sinequone Project This is part of a Defense Department program focused on testing how commercial launch services and orbit-transfer vehicles can offer affordable, timely access to regions beyond geostationary orbits. Such areas, known as extended Geostationary Orbits (xGEO), encompass paths around Earth where the time taken for one complete revolution exceeds the planet’s rotational period.

For this mission, Firefly’s Elytra spacecraft will act as a space maneuvering vehicle, undertaking various operations and carrying multiple governmental payload instruments. The launch for this mission could occur as soon as 2027.

Firefly has demonstrated our capability for swift and consistent launches, landings, and operations in space as we carry out ambitious missions ranging from low Earth orbit to lunar orbits and farther," stated Jason Kim, CEO of Firefly Aerospace. "This national security operation will showcase our capacity to conduct timely and necessary tasks on orbit whenever and wherever our clients require them using our highly agile Elytra orbital vehicle.

Firefly's multi-mission orbital craft, Elytra, saw its primary engine, called Spectre, validated recently when Firefly achieved the remarkable feat of becoming the first private firm to successfully land on the Moon in early March.

Firefly successfully landed its Blue Ghost Mission 1 The lunar lander touched down on the moon's surface on March 2, after which it functioned with 10 NASA-supported scientific and technological experiments throughout one lunar day, approximately equal to 14 Earth days.

As per Kim, Elytra will feature the identical systems utilized in the Blue Ghost landing—such as the reaction control system thrusters that were crucial during Blue Ghost’s final approach and touchdown on the moon—for use in the Sinequone mission.

Last month, following its successful lunar mission, Firefly received an $8.2 million grant from the Texas Space Commission to develop clean rooms for spacecraft, enhance testing capabilities, and improve infrastructure support. The company stated that this contribution from the Texas Space Commission will help Firefly increase the production of Elytra units more efficiently and reduce costs.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: The Cedar Park-based company Firefly Aerospace has been granted a contract by the Department of Defense.