Firefly Aerospace already has big plans to head to the moon with its Blue Ghost lunar lander. Now it appears the Cedar Park-based company will be working on establishing a framework for a spacecraft hub that would orbit the moon and provide on-demand services, such as refueling, delivery and de-orbiting.
Firefly announced Dec. 5 that it was selected to support the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's 10-Year Lunar Architecture (LunA-10) capability study for its Elytra vehicle. The research and design for the project will help prove how an orbiting docking system would work.
DARPA's program, which includes 13 other companies, aims to develop an integrated commercial lunar infrastructure, including shareable, scalable systems that could be commercially available on and around the moon by 2035. The agency operates under the U.S. Department of Defense.
Initially, Firefly and the other aerospace companies, will work together during a seven-month sprint. They'll work on solutions for lunar power; mining and commercial resource utilization; communications, navigation, and timing; transit, mobility, and logistics; and construction and robotics, according to a DARPA announcement.
“We’ve identified a path to drastically improve on-orbit mission response times from years to days with scalable spacecraft hubs that can host and service spacecraft across cislunar space," Firefly CEO Bill Weber stated. "This team is ready to hit the ground running in support of this critical DARPA initiative and the responsive space needs of the larger cislunar ecosystem.”
Among the 14 companies selected for the project is Austin-based 3D printing startup Icon. Like Firefly, Icon is also working on a variety of NASA lunar projects, including a $60M contract for Project Olympus, which calls for the development of space-based construction systems for the moon and beyond.
“By participating in LunA-10, we can understand what inputs are going to be available, when, at what cost, and in what quantities," Evan Jensen, Icon’s VP of strategic R&D, stated in a company announcement. "Similarly, those same providers will now understand what ICON capabilities they can rely on to enable their capabilities and services in the lunar economy."
