Firefly Aerospace (Nasdaq: FLY), a market leading space and defense technology company, announced it was awarded a Spacecraft Processing Operations Contract from NASA. This award positions Firefly 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. This capability helps alleviate critical bottlenecks in the industry and accelerates the timeline between payload arrival and liftoff for government and commercial customers,” said Adam Oakes, Vice President of Launch at Firefly Aerospace. “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 procession and fueling facility is filling that void.”
Firefly’s commercially available Payload Processing Facility (PPF), located within 0.5 miles of the company’s Space Launch Complex 2 on the north end of VSFB, supports government and commercial space payloads. Equipped with a storage area, control room, workspace, airlock, and ISO 8 cleanroom, the facility can accommodate storage, fueling, and checkouts of small and medium-size payloads and hypergolic spacecraft.
Under the contract, Firefly is eligible to provide commercial payload processing services to support payload processing, fueling, integration, and encapsulation for NASA missions ahead of launch. The award recognizes Firefly’s growing launch infrastructure and reinforces the company’s role as a trusted provider supporting NASA’s mission portfolio. The award further adds to Firefly’s exiting launch agreements with NASA, including missions for NASA’s Quicksounder and INCUS satellites set to launch on Firefly’s Alpha rocket.
