Firefly Shares Rise 3.6% as Spacecraft Passes Design Review for NASA Lunar Mission
Key Facts
Firefly Aerospace shares rose 3.6% in early trading on October 21, 2026, as the company announced completion of the preliminary design review for its Elytra spacecraft for NASA's MoonFall mission, according to Investing.com. The review confirmed that the spacecraft's design meets the requirements of the mission, which involves delivering drones to the moon's south pole. The announced milestone concerns the preliminary design review stage for the spacecraft that will handle delivery as part of the mission. The shares rose following the announcement, according to the market report published by the website that day on the lunar project's progress. The mission falls within the company's spacecraft solutions business, which accounted for most of its revenue in the second quarter of the year.
Firefly is working on the project under a $75 million subcontract from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, according to Investing.com's coverage of the contract award. The scope of work includes delivering 4 drones to the moon's south polar region using the spacecraft assigned to the mission. Ray Allensworth, the company's vice president of spacecraft, said the preliminary design review was completed less than 4 months after the contract was awarded. She added, in a statement carried in the website's coverage of the developments: "Completing the preliminary design review less than 4 months after the contract award is a testament to the speed and rigor Firefly brings to every mission." Allensworth's statement links the pace of engineering work on the project to the time elapsed since the company was awarded the contract.
According to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's description of the mission, the drones will land individually on the lunar surface and then operate autonomously while carrying out their activities there. Each drone will be able to use up to 10 high-resolution optical cameras to image hard-to-reach terrain. The mission's imaging component relies on the Lunar Dashcam system, which NASA said will produce digital terrain maps at a much higher resolution than current satellite images. The operating plan includes multiple flights during a single lunar day, allowing the drones to conduct imaging operations within that period. The lunar operating day is equivalent to up to 14 Earth days, according to the laboratory, as part of a mission combining individual drone landings, autonomous operations and high-resolution imaging.
On the financial front, Firefly's revenue totaled $117.7 million in the second quarter of 2026, according to Investing.com's coverage of the company's financial results for the period. Revenue grew nearly 46% from the previous quarter, while the year-on-year increase was 659%, according to the same coverage. Spacecraft solutions was the dominant source of revenue, generating $108.3 million during the second quarter, the period covered by the published results. The segment accounted for 92% of the company's total revenue, placing it at the forefront of its businesses in terms of contribution to reported sales. This dominance of the revenue mix coincided with growth in total sales in both the quarterly and annual comparisons cited in the financial results coverage.
Firefly's backlog rose to $1.5 billion in the second quarter, according to Investing.com's coverage of the company's earnings call. The backlog stood at $1.3 billion in the first quarter, the comparison period cited by the company in its presentation on the development of its contract portfolio. Alongside the increase in backlog, Firefly reaffirmed its full-year 2026 revenue outlook, according to coverage of the earnings call. The company set the lower end of its expected range at $420 million in annual revenue, with an upper end of $450 million. The range was maintained as part of the second-quarter results disclosure, which also showed revenue growth compared with the previous quarter and the corresponding period a year earlier.
The next step in carrying out the MoonFall mission is for Firefly to move to the spacecraft's critical design review, according to Investing.com's coverage of the engineering progress announcement. This review comes before hardware manufacturing begins, according to the sequence the company outlined for the next stages of the project. Hardware assembly is also among the activities that will follow the critical design review, after the company passed the preliminary stage it announced it had completed. The upcoming stages therefore include an additional engineering review, followed by hardware manufacturing and assembly for the mission to deliver lunar drones. The mission is targeting launch readiness by late 2028, according to the timeline included in coverage of the announcement.