Apr 1, 2019

On March 30, Firefly hosted a day of briefings, tours and a hot-fire demonstration of the upper stage Lightning engine at their Cedar Park, Texas headquarters for members of Base 11 Space Challenge. The challenge tasks student teams with launching a liquid-propelled, single-stage rocket to an altitude of 100 kilometers by December 30, 2021 and is supported by Firefly through its non-profit Firefly Academy in collaboration with the University of Texas.

Apr 8, 2019

Firefly Aerospace was a participant of the 35th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs with an exhibit that included a rocket engine and a life-sized replica of a payload fairing.

Apr 18, 2019 

Eric Salwan, Firefly’s Director of Commercial Business Development, visited Space Access 2019 in Fremont, CA where he took part in a section on Entrepreneurial Revolution in SmallSat launch, with an update on Alpha launch vehicle progress and overviews of the company's other programs, including the Commercial Lunar Payload Services contract with NASA.

Apr 18, 2019

Firefly CEO Dr. Tom Markusic visited the inaugural Noosphere Space Summit hosted in Kyiv, Ukraine, where he shared his experiences as a New Space entrepreneur. During his talk, he mentioned that the company planned to submit a proposal to NASA in relation to its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program in the near future. Also present were John Isella, Firefly's Director of International Business Development, who moderated a roundtable discussion and Shea Ferring, Vice President of Mission Assurance, with a presentation on Heritage space VS New space. A video of the complete event is available for viewing.

Apr 22, 2019

Max Polyakov, founder and director at Firefly, posted photos from his recent visit to Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, where a launch pad is being constructed for the upcoming launch of Firefly Alpha in late 2019

Apr 29, 2019   

Firefly achieved a major milestone toward flight qualification of the second stage, supporting Firefly’s goal of Alpha first launch in 2019. A 300-second hotfire test of the complete upper stage was accomplished on the company’s vertical stage test stand. Eric Berger from Ars Technica published a report on the test on April 29, where he quoted Firefly saying that all of the second stage's flight avionics, structures, and propulsion systems were subjected to a sustained firing consistent with a normal flight mission. Preliminary analysis of data showed that all of the systems performed nominally, and a post-test inspection revealed no observable degradation of the stage systems.