In June 2023, Firefly Aerospace acquired Spaceflight Inc. to strengthen Firefly’s on-orbit solutions and service the entire lifecycle of customers’ satellites and spacecraft. The acquisition further supports Firefly’s robust portfolio of low-cost space transportation services, including responsive launch and in-space mobility, on-orbit hosting and servicing, and lunar delivery operations.
Spaceflight’s flight-proven orbital vehicles provide payload deliveries, hosting, and transfer services. With extensive expertise in mission management and selling and filling manifests, the company has also supported the deployment of more than 460 payloads into space. Spaceflight operates manufacturing and payload processing facilities in Bellevue, Washington, including state-of-the-art clean rooms, environmental testing capabilities, and large high bays for concurrent spacecraft production.
“With a high market demand for our on-orbit services and rapid response missions, this acquisition uniquely positions Firefly to respond immediately to our customers’ needs,” said Weber. “We look forward to welcoming this team into our incredible Firefly family!”
The addition of Spaceflight brings added capabilities that complement Firefly’s vertically integrated product line, including launch, lunar, and in-space vehicles. Firefly’s Alpha launch vehicle is manifested through 2023 with the U.S. Space Force, NASA, and other commercial customers, as the Company concurrently builds a new medium launch vehicle in collaboration with Northrop Grumman.
Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander is scheduled to complete the first of two missions to the Moon next year with NASA as the anchor customer, and Firefly’s Space Utility Vehicle has a mission scheduled early next year to demonstrate the vehicle’s on-orbit capabilities.
Firefly has had about $301 million in funding after getting a C round closed in Feb 2023.
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Spaceflight was hurting due to their functional banning by SpaceX due to their Sherpa propellant leak accident. This is Firefly effectively picking up Spaceflight’s order book and customer base that had become stranded due to the SpaceX ban. Since most of those customers were smallsats anyways, it dovetails with Firefly’s Alpha payload capability. I mean, the only other readily available options for those customers were waiting for a slot on SpaceX Transporter missions by applying directly or via a different rideshare coordinator, waiting in line for a RocketLab Electron slot, or pinning your hopes on some other startup that has yet to make orbit regularly. With ITAR regulations, it’s not so easy to hop over to a chinese rocket, russian rockets are right out, and the Indians already have a full manifest for quite a while.