Cedar Park Aerospace Company Secures NASA Contract

CEDAR PARK, TEXAS — Firefly Aerospace, Inc., a provider of economical and dependable launch vehicles, spacecraft and in-space services, announced Thursday they have been selected by NASA for award of a commercial lunar payload services (CLPS) contract.

The principal aim of the CLPS program is to acquire end-to-end commercial payload services between the Earth and lunar surface for NASA headquarters' Science, Human Exploration and Operations and Space Technology Mission Directorates units. Under terms of the agreement, Firefly will provide all activities needed to safely integrate, accommodate, transport, and operate NASA payloads using contractor-provided assets, including launch vehicles, lunar lander spacecraft, lunar surface systems, Earth re-entry vehicles, and associated resources.

One of several such agreements, the 10-year contract with Firefly takes effect on Jan. 2, 2019, or sooner, officials said in a press advisory. The deal is part of multiple CLPS task order awards from NASA with a cumulative value of $2.6 billion over the life the contracts, officials noted.

Along with the other contract award winners, Firefly is now eligible to compete for specific task order awards, including the first commercially provided NASA science payload delivery mission to the moon, officials noted. The start of the competition for the first CLPS full lunar mission task order award is expected to be announced by NASA in the near future, officials added.

“This contract award recognizes Firefly’s viable technical approach to deliver NASA science payloads and other commercial cargo to the lunar surface, along with the viability of its business plan and financial resources to develop Firefly’s CLPS system,” Firefly CEO Dr. Tom Markusic said in a prepared statement. “In conjunction with our Beta launch vehicle and our partnership with Intuitive Machines, Firefly will provide an integrated lunar services offering, from the launch pad to the surface of the Moon. We are honored to partner with NASA in an extraordinary effort that will broaden humanity’s knowledge of the cosmos and inspire a new generation of space entrepreneurs.”

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The award is the latest coup for the Cedar Park-based company. In May, Firefly secured support from the U.S. Air Force to use a California site for a planned launch of its commercial rocket, officials announced at the time. A commercial rocket under development by Firefly was scheduled to conduct its first orbital flight in 2019 from the Vandenberg U.S. Air Force base in California. The company this week secured a so-called "statement of support" from the U.S. Air Force for use of the launch site toward that end, officials said. Specifically, the Air Force blessing relates to the company's Firefly Aerospace Program, Alpha and Beta Launch Vehicles utilizing Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB) Space Launch Complex 2 West (SLC-2W) for future launches of the Firefly Alpha and Beta launch vehicles, officials explained.

And this past October, Firefly signed a memorandum of understanding with York Space Systems for the development of integrated launch services and spacecraft mission solutions, the company announced Wednesday. In plain English, this means the locally company is teaming up to launch York's S-CLASS satellites into space, up to four at a time.

The batch of recent news represents a turnaround for the Cedar Park-based firm since 2016, when it temporarily shut its doors after failing to secure a much-needed capital infusion that prompted the layoff of more than 150 workers. The temporary closure resulted after one of the company's primary investors was unable to secure money it had previously committed to invest in Firefly Space Systems, according to media reports at the time. The cash shortfall prompted the exodus of another investor to pull out of its own funding, which left the company way short of the $100 million it needed to get its satellite delivery rocket, the Firefly Alpha, off the ground and into space, according to reports.

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>>> Image courtesy of Firefly Aerospace Inc.