Elytra Orbital Vehicles Introduced by Firefly
A line of highly mobile and scalable orbital vehicles has been introduced by Firefly Aerospace. "Elytra" (pronounced ella-truh) offers on-orbit mobility, hosting, delivery, and servicing across cislunar space and beyond. When launched on Firefly's small- and medium-lift launch vehicles, the technology can service the entire lifecycle of government and commercial missions.
"Elytra further expands Firefly's on-orbit services by opening access to more orbits, extending the life of each mission, and providing deorbiting services to help minimize space debris."
Bill Weber, Firefly Aerospace
Formerly known as Firefly's Space Utility Vehicle, Elytra offers three vehicle models – Elytra Dawn, Elytra Dusk, and Elytra Dark – 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.
Elytra Orbital Vehicles Expand Company's On-Orbit Services
"Elytra further expands Firefly's on-orbit services by opening access to more orbits, extending the life of each mission, and providing deorbiting services to help minimize space debris," said Bill Weber, CEO of Firefly Aerospace. "Our robust vehicle line gives us a unique advantage to quickly launch, deploy, and service satellites on-orbit in response to dynamic changes in space."
"Firefly's Elytra vehicles are scalable and customizable to support each customer's unique on-orbit needs," said Jana Spruce, vice president of Spacecraft at Firefly Aerospace. "Utilizing many of the same flight-proven components from Firefly's launch vehicles and landers, Elytra supports rapid mission schedules while providing affordable access across cislunar space and beyond."
Designed, manufactured, and tested in-house, Elytra utilizes flight-proven hardware flown on Firefly's Alpha vehicle and qualified systems common to Firefly's Blue Ghost lunar lander, including the carbon composite structures, core avionics, and propulsion systems. The spacecraft also utilizes the on-orbit heritage and learnings from Spaceflight's Sherpa vehicle following Firefly's recent acquisition of the company.
The first mission for the new spacecraft is scheduled to launch in 2024 aboard Firefly's Alpha vehicle. The mission, conducted under an agreement with space logistics company Xtenti, LLC, will be a responsive space mission with Elytra and Xtenti's small satellite dispenser, FANTM-RiDE. It will support Xtenti's follow-on study contract with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) to demonstrate FANTM-RiDE's rapid payload reconfiguration capabilities prior to launching on Firefly's Alpha vehicle and performing multiple responsive on-orbit deployments.
Upon launching on Alpha, Firefly's vehicle will utilize the FANTM-RiDE dispenser to first deploy commercial rideshare payloads in Sun-Synchronous Orbit, and then perform an on-orbit maneuver and stand ready to deploy U.S. government payloads on-demand.
Xtenti's Flight Agnostic Non-interfering, Tunable Mass Rideshare Dispenser Equipment (FANTM-RiDE) enables customers to add, replace, or remove payloads from a manifest within hours before launching without invalidating existing mission loads analyses. With a predetermined common interface, FANTM-RiDE also enables entire loaded dispensers to be quickly interchanged between launch vehicles. FANTM-RiDE further protects multiple payloads on-orbit within a container that can open and close on-demand.
(Source: Firefly news releases. Images provided)