Firefly Aerospace To Produce Shell For NASA’s SkyFall Mission

Firefly Aerospace has won a contract to build the protective shell for NASA’s mission to deploy helicopters to Mars.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) handed the company a $13 million subcontract to manufacture, test and deliver an aeroshell to help protect the SkyFall spacecraft and payload during launch, cruise, Mars entry, descent and landing, Firefly said in a July 7 statement. The aeroshell is to include a backshell and heat shield.

JPL’s SkyFall mission is due for launch in late 2028, and to deploy three helicopters on Mars about a year later. Those helicopters are to map the subsurface for resource prospecting, in particular to locate water ice and expand understanding of the planet's terrain.

NASA has called SkyFall its “first nuclear-powered interplanetary spacecraft.” JPL is working with AeroVironment to conceptualize the helicopter.

Firefly Aerospace Chief Technology Officer Shea Ferring credited the company’s past work on large composite structures for securing the order.

The aeroshell is to be developed through Firefly’s Gloworks innovation lab and manufactured at its facility in Briggs, Texas. Firefly plans to use similar carbon composites to those on its Elytra orbiters and Blue Ghost lunar landers to speed up production. Firefly told Aviation Week in an email that this enables it to develop the structure with a team of 20 employees, with plans to deliver the aeroshell by late 2027.

“Everything we’re doing on the Moon yields transferrable technologies and experience that we can apply to Mars,” Ray Allensworth, vice president of spacecraft, said in the press release.

Firefly in June received a $144 million contract for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, supporting an accelerated Blue Ghost Lunar Mission, and in May won a $75 million subcontract for four drones as part of JPL’s MoonFall mission.