18 Facts About Firefly Beta

Firefly Beta Aerospace is an American private aerospace firm based in Austin, Texas, that develops launch vehicles for commercial launches to orbit.

Firefly Beta completed its $75 million Series A investment round in May 2021, which was led by DADA Holdings.

Firefly Beta Aerospace is a proponent of NewSpace: a movement in the aerospace industry whose objective is to increase access to space.

Firefly Beta is a launch vehicle concept originally planned to consist of three Alpha cores strapped together.

In October 2019, Firefly Beta announced a partnership with Aerojet Rocketdyne to develop a single core rocket potentially powered by Rocketdyne's AR1 engine.

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Firefly Beta is a subcontractor for the Northrop Grumman Antares series 300, contracted to provide the first stage booster for the Antares rocket.

Firefly Beta Gamma is a concept of a winged rocket to launch small payloads into orbit.

Blue Ghost is a lunar lander designed internally at Firefly Beta to meet NASA's updated requirements for a CLPS lunar lander.

Firefly Beta Aerospace is responsible for end-to-end delivery services, including payload integration, launch from Earth, landing on the Moon, and mission operations.

Mare Crisium, where Firefly Beta Aerospace's Blue Ghost will land, is a more than 500-km-wide basin where instruments will gather data to provide insight into the Moon's regolith – loose, fragmented rock and soil – properties, geophysical characteristics, and the interaction of solar wind and Earth's magnetic field.

Firefly Beta is developing spacecraft to provide end-to-end space transportation services.

The Firefly Beta Space Utility Vehicle is a reusable electric spacecraft that moves payloads and satellites from one orbit to another within LEO, GEO, and Lunar space.

In November 2014, Firefly Beta moved its headquarters from Hawthorne, California to Austin-suburb Cedar Park, Texas.

In 2014, Firefly Beta purchased fiber-winding equipment for manufacturing composite cryotanks that would be built using an out-of-autoclave process.

Firefly Beta's objective was to be cash-flow positive by 2018, based on anticipated small-satellite business.

Firefly Beta had signed an agreement with Space Florida to launch from the Florida "Space Coast".

In March 2017, it was announced that "virtually all" of the assets of Firefly Beta would be sold at auction, organized by EOS Launcher, Inc, who had previously bought a US$1 million promissory note issued by Firefly Beta to Space Florida and induced a foreclosure.

Development of engines and structures resumed in 2017 and Firefly Beta Aerospace performed multiple hot-fire tests of its Lightning-1 second stage engine on its existing horizontal test stand.