Firefly Aerospace

Overview

Cedar Park Builds Landers, Briggs Tests Rockets

Firefly Space Systems moved from Hawthorne, California, to Cedar Park in November 2014, went bankrupt in 2017 and was re-formed that year as Firefly Aerospace. AE Industrial Partners took control in 2022, and the company listed on Nasdaq as FLY in August 2025, raising $868 million. Jason Kim is CEO.

Revenue reached about $160 million in 2025, up 163 percent, and $117.7 million in the second quarter of 2026 alone; Firefly guides to $420 million to $450 million for 2026. The October 2025 purchase of SciTec, a Princeton, New Jersey, missile-warning software firm, for about $855 million in cash and stock added US Space Force ground-system work, including the Future Operationally Resilient Ground Evolution (FORGE) missile-warning program.

Programs

Four Vehicle Lines Share the Cedar Park and Briggs Plants

Blue Ghost Mission 1 launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 on January 15, 2025, landed on Mare Crisium on March 2 and operated for 14 days under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Mission 2 stacks a Blue Ghost lander on an Elytra Dark orbital vehicle to land on the lunar far side with the LuSEE-Night radio telescope and the UAE's Rashid 2 rover, and to place the European Space Agency's Lunar Pathfinder relay satellite in lunar orbit; Firefly lists launch no earlier than late 2026, and some schedules show 2027.

Alpha, Firefly's small launcher, failed on its sixth flight in April 2025, and a first stage exploded during acceptance testing in Texas on September 29, 2025. Flight 7 reached orbit in March 2026, and the Block 2 version, about seven feet longer with in-house avionics, debuts on Flight 8 in the fourth quarter of 2026. Lockheed Martin has extended its agreement to up to 25 Alpha launches through 2031.

Facilities

A Doubled Cedar Park Campus and a Six-Stand Rocket Ranch

On May 19, 2026, Firefly announced two new Cedar Park buildings totaling 144,000 square feet next to its spacecraft facility, doubling the campus and housing a new headquarters. The spacecraft cleanroom grows to four times its former size for a dedicated Blue Ghost and Elytra assembly line, paid for in part by an $8.2 million Texas Space Commission grant from the Space Exploration and Aeronautics Research Fund (SEARF). A new Gloworks lab covers propulsion, carbon composites, robotics and 3D printing. Cedar Park's October 2025 economic development agreement with Firefly targets 300 new jobs.

The Rocket Ranch in Briggs, Burnet County, less than 30 miles north of Cedar Park, covers about 200 acres with six test stands and 217,000 square feet of launch vehicle buildings. Firefly is upgrading its Eclipse stand to fire several Miranda engines at once. Northrop Grumman invested $50 million in Eclipse in 2025, and the Eclipse first stage also flies on Northrop's Antares 330.

China

China Holds the Far-Side Firsts Blue Ghost 2 Pursues

China's Chang'e 4 made the first far-side landing in January 2019, and Chang'e 6 returned the first far-side samples in June 2024. Blue Ghost Mission 2 would be the first US landing on the far side. China's Chang'e 7 south pole mission, built to look for water ice near Shackleton crater, missed its August 2026 launch window, while Firefly's own south pole mission and the NASA MoonFall drones target the same region later in the decade.

Constraints

Launch Reliability and Mission Schedules

Alpha has had two outright failures and two partial failures in seven flights, and the Block 2 debut and three planned 2026 Alpha flights are still ahead. Blue Ghost 2 depends on a Falcon 9 slot and a far-side landing with relay through Elytra, and Eclipse's 2027 debut depends on Miranda qualification at Briggs.

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