The lander is named after the blue ghost firefly Phausis reticulata. Blue Ghost lunar lander Blue Ghostīlue Ghost is a lunar lander designed at Firefly's Cedar Park facility to meet NASA's updated requirements for a CLPS lunar lander. Due to changing CLPS specifications, Firefly determined that Genesis no longer fit NASA's requirements and started work on a new lunar lander design called Blue Ghost in 2021. If selected, Firefly Genesis would have been launched on a Firefly Beta rocket, or a Falcon 9 rocket in late 2022. Genesis was proposed for NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) to deliver payloads to the surface of the Moon. 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. If built, its first test flights are expected to start in the 2020s. It would be a 2-stage rocket 75% reusable with its first stage landing horizontally at a runway. Firefly Gamma Firefly FRE-R1 engine test, September 2015įirefly Gamma is a concept of a winged rocket to launch small payloads into orbit. This booster rocket is based on the Firefly Beta first stage, but modified to fit the form factor of the Antares first stage configuration, to fit the same launch mounting and attachments, and the same upper (second) stage. Antares 300 įirefly is a subcontractor for the Northrop Grumman Antares series 300, contracted to provide the first stage booster for the Antares rocket. As of March 2023, the first MLV launch is scheduled for 2025. 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, and capable of delivering 14,000 kg to LEO in a 5 m (16.4 ft) fairing. Current design īy August 2022, the concept had undergone another revision. In October 2021, the first Beta launch was planned for the second half of 2024. The first stage would be 3.7 m (12 ft) in diameter with 5 Reaver engines capable of delivering 8000 kg to LEO or 5800 kg to SSO inside a 4.7 m (15 ft) fairing. In 2020, the Beta was redesigned to be a scaled up Alpha. In October 2019, Firefly announced a partnership with Aerojet Rocketdyne to develop a single core rocket potentially powered by Rocketdyne's AR1 engine. The first fully successful launch of Alpha took place on 15 September 2023.įirefly previously pursued a medium-lift launch vehicle design known as Firefly Beta, which consisted of three Alpha cores strapped together. The rocket performed its first partially successful orbital launch on October 1, 2022, after an unsuccessful first attempt on September 3, 2021. It utilizes Reaver-1 and Lightning-1 engines and a lightweight carbon composite structure to reduce launch weight, resulting in an improved payload fraction. Alpha is designed to compete with vehicles like the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). The projected launch cost is US$15 million per launch. The Alpha vehicle developed by Firefly Aerospace is an expendable launch vehicle with 1,170 kg (2,580 lb) payload capability to low Earth orbit and 745 kg (1,642 lb) to Sun-synchronous orbit.
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