Firefly Aerospace, Inc., an end-to-end space transportation company, announced the expansion of its on-orbit services with a line of highly mobile and scalable orbital vehicles named Elytra. As the wings of a firefly, Elytra (pronounced ella-truh) offers on-orbit mobility, hosting, delivery, and servicing across cislunar space and beyond. When launched on Firefly\u2019s small- and medium-lift launch vehicles, Elytra can service the entire lifecycle of government and commercial missions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cElytra further expands Firefly\u2019s on-orbit services by opening access to more orbits, extending the life of each mission, and providing deorbiting services to help minimize space debris,\u201d said Bill Weber, CEO of Firefly Aerospace. \u201cOur robust vehicle line gives us a unique advantage to quickly launch, deploy, and service satellites on-orbit in response to dynamic changes in space.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Formerly known as Firefly\u2019s Space Utility Vehicle, Elytra offers three vehicle models \u2013 Elytra Dawn, Elytra Dusk, and Elytra Dark \u2013 that travel further into space to support larger, more advanced on-orbit missions. Optimized for low Earth orbit (LEO), Elytra Dawn can be rapidly launched to support responsive hosting, rideshare, and delivery missions. Elytra Dusk offers enhanced maneuverability, power, and autonomy to provide responsive on-orbit tasking, such as relocation, space domain awareness, and deorbiting services, from LEO to geosynchronous orbit (GEO). Elytra Dark is ruggedized to serve as persistent orbital infrastructure and support transfers from LEO to lunar orbit and beyond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFirefly\u2019s Elytra vehicles are scalable and customizable to support each customer\u2019s unique on-orbit needs,\u201d said Jana Spruce, Vice President of Spacecraft at Firefly Aerospace. \u201cUtilizing many of the same flight-proven components from Firefly\u2019s launch vehicles and landers, Elytra supports rapid mission schedules while providing affordable access across cislunar space and beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Designed, manufactured, and tested in-house, Elytra utilizes flight-proven hardware flown on Firefly\u2019s Alpha vehicle and qualified systems common to Firefly\u2019s Blue Ghost lunar lander, including the carbon composite structures, core avionics, and propulsion systems. Elytra also utilizes the on-orbit heritage and learnings from Spaceflight\u2019s Sherpa vehicle following Firefly\u2019s recent acquisition of the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Firefly\u2019s first Elytra mission is scheduled to launch in 2024 aboard Firefly\u2019s Alpha vehicle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Firefly Aerospace, Inc., an end-to-end space transportation company, announced the expansion of its on-orbit…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2223,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[221],"tags":[219,210,211,215,214],"class_list":["post-2207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-global-news","tag-indian-space-magazines","tag-indian-space-news","tag-space-magazines","tag-space-news-online","tag-space-news-today"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spacepreneurmag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spacepreneurmag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spacepreneurmag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacepreneurmag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacepreneurmag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2207"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacepreneurmag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2224,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacepreneurmag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2207\/revisions\/2224"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacepreneurmag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spacepreneurmag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacepreneurmag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spacepreneurmag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}