WASHINGTON — The Defense Innovation Unit announced on March 21 that it has agreed to study the potential use of Firefly Aerospace’s Elytra orbital vehicle for missions beyond the geosynchronous Earth orbit.
The Pentagon’s commercial technology arm, DIU, awarded Firefly a study contract, which, when finished, could lead to as many as two flight demonstration missions in the region between GEO orbit and the moon, also known as cislunar space.
The contract supports DIU’s Sinequone project that aims to provide cost-effective, responsive access to cislunar space through both launch and orbital transfer services.
“The Department of Defense must be ready to promote safe and secure commercial and civil growth in this region,” said DIU regarding cislunar space.
Established in 2015, DIU acts as a bridge between the Department of Defense and the commercial tech sector. The project with Firefly comes after another space logistics project DIU announced on March 20.
Deploying payloads in cislunar space
DIU’s Sinequone project is exploring the use of commercial launch and orbital transfer systems to provide capabilities and assets to one or more orbits in cislunar space. Regarding the Sinequone solicitation in 2022, DIU received 112 solution briefs from 94 companies, according to Nathan Gapp, DIU program manager.
The agreement with Firefly “will enable the government to evaluate the technical feasibility and operational effectiveness of the company’s responsive launch and delivery capabilities,” said Gapp. “The demonstration will focus on the successful application of the combined launch vehicle and orbit transfer vehicle technology and methodologies to meet the government’s goal of delivering the initial space vehicles to orbit within 18 months of approval to proceed.”
Under the contract, after the initial study, Firefly would deliver three to six orbital vehicles for one or more launches to orbits in cislunar space, with the goal of reducing the time to deliver for each subsequent mission.
Firefly also is under contract to the National Reconnaissance Office for a mission to deploy small payloads from the Elytra orbital vehicle.
