NASA Contractors Firefly And Intuitive Machines Are...

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Firefly Aerospace and Intuitive Machines belong to a group of more than a dozen private companies vying to land lucrative NASA contracts sending small spacecraft to the Moon. But according to Trina Patterson , Firefly's vice president of marketing and communications, the two have managed to remain friendly within the competitive space ecosystem.

⁘We're very, very much ⁘competimates,'⁘ said Patterson while speaking at a SXSW panel on March 11 alongside Josh Marshall , communications director at Intuitive Machines, and Nilufar Ramji , a public affairs officer for NASA. ⁘The lunar economy can't be done by a monopoly. It really takes a village,⁘ she added.

Both Firefly and Intuitive Machines are vendors for NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, an initiative established by the space agency six years ago to launch a lunar economy propelled by a mix of startups and established companies bidding on NASA's Moon contracts. The model offers NASA a more hands-off and low-cost approach to lunar missions, with the agency sending science and technology experiments aboard CLPS vendor-designed spacecraft.

Nearly every space company can relate to the pain of a mission gone awry. Firefly, which also develops rockets, experienced a mid-air explosion of its Alpha rocket during a 2021 launch that resulted in pieces of the vehicle falling back down to the ground ⁘like feathers,⁘ according to Patterson. One of these pieces was later mailed to Astrobotic , another CLPS contractor, after a mission last year failed to reach the Moon due to a valve leak. Firefly's message included a note reading, ⁘We understand where you've been. Keep going forward,⁘ according to Patterson.

He added that Firefly holds watch parties to celebrate launches from its rivals like Intuitive Machines. ⁘Going to space is hard. Landing on the Moon is harder,⁘ he said. ⁘It's extremely difficult, and you have to support each other.⁘

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