COMPANIES · SPACE INFRA

Firefly Aerospace

Firefly Aerospace is a Texas space and defense company that builds small- to medium-lift launch vehicles, the Blue Ghost lunar lander and orbital spacecraft. It listed on Nasdaq in August 2025 and its Blue Ghost Mission 1 was the first commercial lunar lander to touch down successfully on the Moon.

AI-adjacentSpace infra
What it does

Firefly Aerospace is a Texas space and defense company that builds small- to medium-lift launch vehicles, the Blue Ghost lunar lander and orbital spacecraft. It listed on Nasdaq in August 2025 and its Blue Ghost Mission 1 was the first commercial lunar lander to touch down successfully on the Moon.

Why it matters

It is one of the few new entrants to have both listed publicly and actually landed hardware on another body, which makes it a useful reality check on a sector heavy with renderings. Nothing in its current business is AI: it sells rides and landers.

How it makes money

NASA, the US Department of War and commercial customers pay Firefly for launches, lunar delivery missions and spacecraft.

Geography

United States

AI stack position

Space and next-generation infrastructure. Launch providers, satellite builders and operators, ground networks and the first attempts at running computing in orbit. Most of these companies have no AI business today; they are on this map because of what they carry, connect or build for the companies that do. Open the space lens.

Connections (1)

Every connection below is tied to a readable source, date, classification and statement of its limits. A company source establishes what that company stated; it does not necessarily provide independent confirmation.

Comparisons (1)

Firefly Aerospace competes with Intuitive Machines
Competes withComparison only
Firefly won a $144 million task order under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program to deliver three science instruments to the Moon in 2028 - its fifth CLPS lunar mission - in the same NASA program under which Intuitive Machines flies its lunar landers.

Source: 2026-06-30 · reviewed 2026-09-24

Evidence: Analytical comparison · Product/market overlap

Limits: The cited source documents only Firefly's award and does not name Intuitive Machines. It does not establish that the two bid against each other for this task order, nor compare their pricing, landing success rates or share of CLPS awards.

Firefly Aerospace Awarded $144 Million NASA CLPS Contract for Accelerated Blue Ghost Lunar Mission ↗

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Inclusion in this database is not an endorsement of a company or its securities. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell anything, and none of it is individualized investment advice. See the disclosures. Data: AI Map v3.22, released .