Firefly Space Systems, a once promising startup planning to launch small satellites into space, appears to be reemerging from an April 2017 bankruptcy with a nearly identical mission and a slightly different name -- Firefly Aerospace.
Firefly Aerospace, led by former Firefly Space Systems CEO Tom Markusic, posted several new job openings on its website and affiliated social media handles. The jobs include composite structures engineers, propulsion engineers and more.
"Firefly Aerospace is re-establishing the team to build Firefly Alpha," the company wrote in a Facebook post. "We have been working aggressively since May to get engineering, facilities and hardware development back on track. We have sixty people on staff today and hope to have about one hundred people on the project before the end of the calendar year. Firefly is fully funded to develop and fly an enhanced-capability version (1000 kg payload) of Alpha by the second quarter of 2019."
The company couldn't be immediately reached for additional comment Tuesday, and a representative said via Facebook Messenger that the company isn't doing any additional press now. But a story The Space Review says the new company is wholly-owned by Noosphere Ventures, which acquired the assets of Firefly when it auctioned off assets after filing bankruptcy this spring.
Markusic founded Firefly in 2014 along with P.J. King and Michael Blum. After initial research, the founders opened Firefly headquarters in Cedar Park, just north of Austin. They later opened a second facility in Bertram, about an hour north of Austin, where it could test fire rockets in a relatively remote area.
By 2015, engineers had test fired their first rocket. And Firefly looked like it might be a leading player in the race to bring small satellites into low-Earth orbit. The company won a $5.5 million contract with NASA for launch services. And the company raised a $19 million round in June 2016, giving it a significant slice of the $100 million the company expected to raise in order to get the company up to its full potential.
But Firefly hit turbulence when a major European investor decided to pull out of the funding deal. That left Firefly with few choices but to furlough most of its 150 staff in October 2016. (The company had also been dealing with complaints from Virgin Galactic that Markusic stole proprietary information when he worked for Virgin -- Markusic has said Firefly has never used another company's trade secrets and that the Virgin case had no impact on the investor's decision to pull out.)
In April this year, the Austin Business Journal reported Markusic had filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy, effectively shutting down Firefly Space Systems and selling off any remaining assets to pay off debts.
The company doesn't appeared to have made any public statements or social media posts since November last year -- until this week.
