How Rocket Lab Is Helping Firefly Aerospace Land On The Moon
Rocket Lab has made it clear over the past few years and especially in recent months, that they intend to become much more than just a launch provider. While rockets like Electron and Neutron are essential, the company wants to be a one stop shop for practically the entire space process. This is a big reason why they have acquired so many different companies in recent years.
One exciting upcoming opportunity thanks to these acquisitions has to do with Firefly Aerospace. Specifically, Firefly Aerospace has been working on a lunar lander named Blue Ghost, expected to land on the moon by 2024. However, Rocket Lab is responsible for providing the solar panels, flight software, ground software, trajectory design, and so much more.
This is quite a big deal as it highlights the maturity of some of Rocket Lab’s additions to the company and its application on ambitious missions like Firefly’s Blue Ghost. Very recently, Rocket Lab acquired leading satellite solar power producer SolAero Technologies, now they are already working on a host of different missions using this technology. Here I will go more in-depth into this future mission, what exactly Rocket Lab is providing, the importance of these acquisitions, and more.
Rocket Lab & Blue Ghost
Firefly’s Lunar Lander Blue Ghost was awarded a mission by NASA as part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program and will deliver a suite of 10 NASA-sponsored payloads, as well as other commercial payloads, to the lunar surface in 2024. The initial award was over $93 million dollars. These payloads will operate using lander-provided data and power resources through transit to the Moon, for an entire lunar day, and into the lunar night in Mare Crisium. This mission will support scientific lunar research and will contribute to developing a sustainable presence on the Moon.
In terms of progress, most recently the company completed the Integration Readiness Review or IRR. During the review, held at Firefly’s headquarters in Cedar Park, TX, the team marked key progress milestones across multiple areas, including Structures, Fluids, Propulsion, Core Avionics, and more. All of which comes back to Rocket Lab and their additions to the mission. Back in late May of this year, Firefly tweeted saying, “Lunar Update: More hardware coming to fruition as our partner @SolaeroTech delivered the three flight solar panels that will support our Blue Ghost M1 landing on the Moon early 2024.” Rocket Lab replied to this tweet mentioning, “Proud to be supporting this exciting mission!” Specifically, one of the key components that Rocket Lab is contributing is solar panels.
As partially mentioned prior, Rocket Lab acquired SolAero earlier this year. Founded in 1998 and headquartered in Albuquerque, New Mexico, SolAero’s solar cells, solar panels, and composite structural products have supported more than 1,000 successful space missions with 100% reliability and mission success to date. Over the past two decades, SolAero’s products have played key roles in some of the industry’s most ambitious space missions, including supplying power to NASA’s Parker Solar Probe and Mars Insight Lander, the largest solar array ever deployed on the surface of Mars, and several Cygnus Cargo Resupply Missions to the International Space Station. In addition, SolAero led the development and manufacturing of the solar panel on Ingenuity, the helicopter that successfully flew on Mars in April this year, marking the first ever powered, controlled flight on a planet other than Earth. Now under Rocket Lab, they are helping Firefly reach and support payloads on the Moon.
The next addition to Blue Ghost thanks to Rocket Lab is a large host of software. In April Firefly completed the IRR and Rocket Lab tweeted pointing out, “Congrats to the team at @Firefly_Space on this exciting mission milestone! We’re thrilled to be supporting Blue Ghost with GNC and spacecraft software via our Colorado-based team. Specifically, they will be providing flight software, ground software, GN&C software, trajectory design, orbit determination, and avionics/flight software testbed integration. Last year Rocket Lab acquired Advanced Solutions, Inc (ASI), a Colorado-based aerospace engineering firm delivering mission proven space software, mission simulation, and testing solutions. ASI’s industry-leading technology in flight software, mission simulation, and Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) significantly strengthen Rocket Lab’s Space Systems portfolio, which encompasses the Photon spacecraft line and Rocket Lab’s satellite component hardware. All of which is currently being applied to Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander for a mission to the Moon scheduled for 2024.
Rocket Lab Acquisitions
Now that we know more about Firefly’s upcoming mission and what Rocket Lab is helping provide, we can take a closer look at some of these acquisitions and the important role they are playing. Starting with SolAero which was the most recent purchase from Rocket Lab. On January 11th, this year, Rocket Lab closed the previously-announced transaction to acquire SolAero Holdings, Inc. a premier supplier of space solar power products and precision aerospace structures for the global aerospace market, for $80 million in cash. The acquisition aligns with Rocket Lab’s growth strategy of vertical integration to deliver a comprehensive space solution that spans spacecraft manufacture, satellite subsystems, flight software, ground operations, and launch. As one of only two companies producing high-efficiency, space-grade solar cells in the United States, SolAero’s space solar cells are among the highest performing in the world and support civil space exploration, science, defense and intelligence, and commercial markets. In combining with Rocket Lab, SolAero will tap into the Company’s resources and manufacturing capability to boost high-volume production, making high-performing space power technologies available at scale.
“SolAero has established itself as a premier provider of solar technologies and we are very excited to be joining forces,” said Rocket Lab founder and CEO, Peter Beck. “SolAero is a highly complementary addition to Rocket Lab’s vertically integrated business model, enabling us to deliver complete space mission solutions for our customers. With more than 1,000 successful missions under their belt, the team at SolAero have enabled trailblazing missions, providing space solar power solutions for the James Webb Space Telescope, and missions on Mars including InSight and Ingenuity. We are thrilled to be combining our innovative teams, industry-leading technologies, and strong resources to enable our customers to achieve incredible things in space.” The addition of SolAero’s 425-strong team brings Rocket Lab’s total headcount to more than 1,100 employees across its space manufacturing complexes, test facilities, and launch sites in California, Virginia, Colorado, Maryland, Toronto, New Zealand and now Albuquerque, New Mexico. The SolAero team will continue to be led by President and CEO Brad Clevenger at SolAero’s 154,696 ft² (14,372 m²) production facilities in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
We then have ASI and the software Rocket Lab is using and providing to other projects like Blue Ghost. Almost exactly 1 year ago on October 12th, 2021, Rocket Lab announced it had completed the acquisition of Advanced Solutions, Inc. (ASI), a Colorado-based aerospace engineering firm delivering mission proven space software, mission simulation and test systems, and GNC solutions, for $40 million. At the time of this announcement, Peter Beck said, “Both Rocket Lab and ASI have built leading space businesses with mission proven technology and have a shared vision of making it easier to get to space and do incredible things there, so we’re excited to welcome ASI aboard to further enhance our space systems portfolio and deliver enhanced end-to-end space solutions. The ASI team revolutionized flight software and have enabled some of the most significant space exploration missions. For more than 20 years they have been delivering industry-first, off-the-shelf spacecraft flight software products that enable cost-effective and highly capable constellation and interplanetary missions. By joining forces, we believe it will have a transformative effect on the way spacecraft are designed, built, tested, launched, and operated, further unlocking space’s potential.”
Some examples of the software available from ASI include SOLIS, a complete spacecraft simulation environment in STK that embeds a desktop version of MAX Flight Software. Then there’s MAX, which provides flight proven off-the-shelf flight software providing the foundation for complex space missions from day one. Finally, MAX Ground Systems, developed to support the entire spacecraft lifecycle, MAX GDS is a ground software solution that provides complete spacecraft command and control for all spacecraft and constellations. Altogether this creates the software suite provided by ASI and now Rocket Lab.
Conclusion
Rocket Lab has been very busy in recent years. At the same time as they work on next generation launch vehicles like Neutron and Electron partial reusability, they also are trying to become a one stop shop within the space industry. Through the acquisition of many different companies, they have a lot more to offer not only themselves but also other companies for a variety of missions. A good example is Firefly’s upcoming mission to the Moon using Rocket Lab’s solar panels and software. We will have to wait and see how it progresses and the impact it has on the space industry.