Firefly Aerospace is committed to providing economical and convenient access to space for small payloads through the design, manufacture and operation of reliable launch vehicles.
Created: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2022-02-20
Company - Firefly Aerospace
- Founded
- Country
- 2014
- USA
- Website
- Firefly Aerospace
Service - Moon Lander, Blue Ghost
- Classification
- Cargo Transportation & Landers
- Category
- Transport Service (LEO-Moon)
Commercial Lunar Lander
Space Tug
- Status
- 3) Development
- First launch
- 2023
Firefly’s Space Utility Vehicle (SUV) takes your payload to orbits a small launch vehicle could never access before. By means of the in-space propulsive third stage, uplink/downlink services, and up to 2 kW of solar power, SUV is capable of satisfying a wide variety of mission architectures that last up to 5 years.
Firefly Research has been selected to receive a NASA contract to support development of a revolutionary new spacecraft called the Space Utility Vehicle (SUV). The SUV provides the in-space bridge between Firefly’s Alpha launch vehicle and its Blue Ghost lunar lander, allowing Firefly to provide the only complete end-to-end space transportation solution in the industry.
Firefly Research, LLC (FFR) is pleased to propose to NASA the development of a Space Utility Vehicle (SUV) to a CDR level of fidelity. This vehicle serves as a solar electric transfer stage, offering enough Delta-V to transfer more than 500 kg of payload from Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to Low Lunar Orbit (LLO) after launch on a small lift launch vehicle. While most technologies needed for such a transfer stage are reasonably mature, the SUV is innovative in how the vehicle architecture breaks the long-held assumptions of Electric Propulsion (EP) being either slow or expensive. We are able to offer a high-power platform with rapid transit capability at a competitive cost through refueling and reuse of that platform, amortizing platform cost over multiple missions. In this section, we explain the details of this architecture, the roadmap to a commercially viable SUV including developments already underway, and the specific aspects that will benefit from SBIR funding.
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