Firefly Aerospace facts for kids
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| Industry | Aerospace |
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| Founded | March 2017 |
| Founder | Tom Markusic |
| Headquarters |
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United States
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Key people
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Jason Kim (CEO) |
| Products | Alpha (small-lift launch vehicle) MLV (medium-lift launch vehicle) Blue Ghost (lunar lander) Elytra (space tug) |
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Number of employees
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750 |
Firefly Aerospace is an American private aerospace firm based in Cedar Park, Texas, that develops small- and medium-lift launch vehicles for commercial launches to orbit. The current company was formed when the assets of the former company Firefly Space Systems were acquired by EOS Launcher in March 2017, which was then renamed Firefly Aerospace. Firefly's stated purpose is to increase access to space, similar to other private spaceflight companies.
Contents
Launch vehicles
Firefly Alpha
The Alpha vehicle developed by Firefly Aerospace is an expendable launch vehicle capable of lifting 1,030 kg (2,270 lb) to low Earth orbit and 630 kg (1,390 lb) to Sun-synchronous orbit. Firefly's advertised launch price is US$15 million. Alpha is designed to compete with vehicles like Rocket Lab's Electron, ISRO's PSLV, ABL SS's RS1, and Northrop Grumman's Pegasus. It uses four Reaver engines on its first stage and one Lightning engine on its second, with a lightweight carbon composite structure to reduce dry mass, resulting in an improved payload fraction.
Alpha performed its first partially successful orbital launch on October 1, 2022, after an unsuccessful first attempt on September 3, 2021. The first fully successful launch of Alpha took place on September 15, 2023. Firefly launched this mission 27 hours after receiving notice to launch, setting a new national security mission responsive-launch record. The previous responsive-launch record was 21 days in June 2021. Firefly's fourth launch on December 22, 2023 was also partially successful, with the second stage failing to perform its circularization burn, leaving its payload in an elliptical orbit instead.
MLV
Previous designs
Firefly previously pursued a medium-lift launch vehicle design known as Firefly Beta, which consisted of three Alpha cores strapped together. In October 2019, Firefly announced a partnership with Aerojet Rocketdyne to develop a single core rocket potentially powered by the Aerojet Rocketdyne AR1 engine. In 2020, the Beta was redesigned to be a scaled up Alpha. The first stage would be 3.7 m (12 ft) in diameter with 5 Reaver 2 engines capable of delivering 8000 kg to LEO or 5800 kg to SSO inside a 4.7 m (15 ft) fairing. In October 2021, the first Beta launch was planned for the second half of 2024.
Current design
Since its announcement in August 2022, the MLV design has undergone several revisions. Now known as the Medium Launch Vehicle, or MLV, the rocket is now 4.32 m (14.17 ft) in diameter with 7 Miranda engines on the first stage and 1 Vira engine on the second stage. It will be capable of delivering over 16,000 kg to LEO in a 5 m (16.4 ft) fairing. The first MLV launch is scheduled for the second half of 2026 from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. MLV will initially be expendable but will eventually "incorporate first-stage reusability." In April 2024, the company reported on social media that it was progressing and on track with Miranda engine testing for the MLV. In mid-2024, the company added that the MLV's first stage is being architected for return to launch site landings, and hope to have the technology refined by flight 6 of the vehicle.
Antares 300
Firefly is a subcontractor for the Northrop Grumman Antares series 300, providing the first stage, which consists of a de-rated MLV first stage. The second stage is carried over from the previous Antares 230+. Wallops LP-0A is being retrofitted to support the new, larger, more powerful first stage. In April 2024, the company announced testing was occurring on the Antares 300.
Firefly Gamma
Firefly Gamma was a concept of a winged rocket to launch small payloads into orbit. It would have been a two-stage-to-orbit partially reusable rocket, with its first stage landing horizontally on a runway.
Lunar landers
Blue Ghost
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. The lander is named after the blue ghost firefly Phausis reticulata.
On 15 January 2025, Blue Ghost M1, the first Firefly lander, launched on a Falcon 9 Block 5 launch vehicle. The launch was shared with the competing Hakuto-R Mission 2 lunar lander.
Genesis (defunct)
On June 9, 2019, Firefly Aerospace announced that it had signed an agreement with Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), which owns the intellectual property of the Beresheet lunar lander design, to build a lunar lander named Genesis based on Beresheet. Genesis was proposed for NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) to deliver payloads to the surface of the Moon. If selected, Firefly Genesis would have been launched on a Firefly Beta rocket or a Falcon 9 rocket in late 2022. Due to changing CLPS specifications, Firefly determined that Genesis no longer fit NASA's requirements and started work on the Blue Ghost in 2021.
Engines
To date, Firefly is the only organization to develop an orbital-class rocket engine utilizing the combustion tap-off cycle, and the only organization to develop a tap-off cycle engine using RP-1 (highly refined kerosene) and liquid oxygen, also known as a kerolox engine.
This engine type eliminates traditional gas generators and instead opts to "tap off" the main combustion chamber, utilizing the high heat and pressure within it to drive the pumps.
This provides a slight increase in specific impulse and results in a dramatically simpler and lighter engine, in exchange for increased engineering complexity and requiring more exotic materials in order to handle the high heat and pressure. The startup sequence is also more challenging.
As a result of these challenges, tap-off has been largely ignored, with the only other engines using it being the Rocketdyne J-2S and Blue Origin BE-3PM, which are both hydrolox engines (fueled by liquid hydrogen).
Firefly designed both Reaver and Lightning in close cooperation with Firefly Aerospace Ukraine which had status of Ukrainian subsidiary of Firefly. Firefly Aerospace Ukraine hadn't any relations to other Ukrainian aerospace companies like Yuzhnoye and Yuzhmash. However Yuzhmash was involved in production of some engine components. There were plans to use Yuzhmash for mass production of Firefly engines but these plans were cancelled.
Reaver
Reaver is an expendable rocket engine designed for use on Firefly's Alpha rocket. It produces 184 kilonewtons (41,000 lbf) of thrust and a specific impulse of 295.6 seconds (2.899 km/s). It is powered by RP-1 and liquid oxygen as its fuel and oxidizer, respectively. Reaver is fixed-throttle, meaning it runs at full power from ignition to first stage shutdown (eschewing the typical throttle-down performed by many vehicles at Max-Q to reduce aerodynamic loads) and is ignited with the pyrophoric combination TEA-TEB (also used on the SpaceX Merlin and Rocketdyne F-1). It utilizes a pintle-type injector.
In 2021, The Verge reported that Astra Space had purchased up to 50 modified Reaver engines and a technology transfer to license-build their own version of Reaver in-house for their Rocket 4 vehicle. Astra refers to this engine as Chiron. It is largely the same as Reaver, but Firefly implemented a two-axis hydraulic gimbal and a modified startup sequence to meet Astra's demands, as part of Firefly's space propulsion program.
Lightning
Lightning is a vacuum-optimized engine designed for use on the upper stage of Firefly's Alpha rocket. Lightning produces 70.1 kilonewtons (15,800 lbf) of thrust and a specific impulse of 322 seconds (3.16 km/s). Like Reaver, Lightning uses RP-1 and LOX as its propellants as well as the same combustion tap-off cycle. It is also re-lightable for missions requiring multiple upper stage burns. It uses Firefly's patented "Crossfire" injector design.
Miranda
Miranda is a liquid-fueled rocket engine currently being developed to power the company’s MLV (Medium Launch Vehicle). The Miranda will also be used on the Antares 330 rocket developed by Northrop Grumman.
The Antares previously used a Ukrainian-built first stage with the Russian-built RD-181 engine and production ceased after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Firefly will also assemble the entire first stage for the Antares 330.
Like Firefly's previous engine's, the Miranda will use RP-1 and LOX in a combustion tap-off cycle. It is expected to produce 1,023 kilonewtons (230,000 lbf) of thrust and a specific impulse of 305 seconds (2.99 km/s) in vacuum.
Development began in 2022, and in 2024 Firefly reported substantial progress on testing the engine, with 20 test fires completed. As of June 2024, the Miranda engine had entered production. To support production of the Miranda engine, the MLV and the first-stage for the Antares 300, Firefly expanded its Briggs, Texas facility from 92,000 to 207,000 square feet (8,500 to 19,200 m2).
Firefly said that it has designed the Miranda from its inception for reusability. The company plans to restart the engine multiple times as the rocket performs a return-to-launch-site maneuver for a propulsive landing.
Vira
Vira (formerly known as "Miranda Vacuum," "Viranda," and "Lightning 2") is a vacuum-optimized version of Miranda designed for the upper stage of Firefly's MLV vehicle. Like the Miranda, the engine will be fueled by RP-1 and LOX. It is expected to produce 890 kilonewtons (200,000 lbf) of thrust and a specific impulse of 328 seconds (3.22 km/s) in vacuum. It is relightable for missions requiring multiple upper stage burns.
Elytra
Firefly is developing Elytra, a lineup of orbital transfer vehicles designed to move payloads and satellites from one orbit to another within LEO, GEO, and cislunar space. Elytra would allow smaller rockets (such as Firefly's own Alpha) to deliver larger payloads to more difficult orbits, and enable satellite relocation, servicing, mission extension, and deorbiting.
It comes in 3 versions: Elytra Dawn (the smallest, intended for LEO operations), Elytra Dusk (intended for LEO-to-geostationary transfers), and Elytra Dark (the most capable, intended for long-duration transfers to cislunar space and beyond). Elytra Dark will propel Blue Ghost Mission 2 to lunar orbit and serve as an orbiter, as well as deploy ESA's Lunar Pathfinder payload.
Production
Firefly headquarters and factory are located in Cedar Park, Texas. The company has access to about 50,000 ft2 of manufacturing facilities for building composite and metallic components in-house. Firefly will use leased launch sites in California (Vandenberg Space Launch Complex 2) and in Florida (SLC-20).
See also
In Spanish: Firefly Aerospace para niños
- Relativity Space
- Rocket Lab
- Stoke Space
