Firefly Aerospace (Nasdaq: FLY) has been awarded a Spacecraft Processing Operations Contract from NASA, enabling the company to compete for task orders providing payload processing facilities and services in support of NASA missions launching from Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSFB).
“Firefly is operating one of the few commercial payload processing facilities supporting West Coast missions, and we’re excited to offer this as a commercial service to our partners at NASA,” said Adam Oakes, Vice President of Launch at Firefly Aerospace. “This capability helps alleviate critical bottlenecks in the industry and accelerates the timeline between payload arrival and liftoff for government and commercial customers.”
“Reliable access to space depends on more than rockets — it depends on the infrastructure that gets payloads ready to fly, and our ready-to-use processing and fueling facility is filling that void,” Oakes added.
Firefly’s commercially available Payload Processing Facility (PPF) is located within 0.5 miles of the company’s Space Launch Complex 2 at the northern end of VSFB. The facility supports government and commercial space payloads and includes a storage area, control room, workspace, airlock and ISO 8 cleanroom.
The facility can accommodate storage, fueling and checkout activities for small and medium-sized payloads and hypergolic spacecraft.
Under the contract, Firefly is eligible to provide commercial payload processing services for NASA missions, including payload processing, fueling, integration and encapsulation activities ahead of launch.
The award adds to Firefly’s existing launch agreements with NASA, including missions for NASA’s QuickSounder and INCUS satellites, which are scheduled to launch aboard Firefly’s Alpha rocket.
