Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has been selected by the U.S. Department of Defense's Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to provide a new monolithic telescope for a responsive space mission that will launch as early as 2027.
Firefly Aerospace will host and operate the payload onboard its Elytra orbital vehicle during the mission in low Earth orbit (LEO), the area in space that ranges from about 60 miles to about 1,240 miles above the Earth.
"LLNL is excited to begin this new collaboration with Firefly for responsive space capabilities, demonstrating unprecedented speed to mission, unique capabilities for a variety of space environments and exceptional in-space imaging," said Benjamin Bahney, LLNL's space program leader.
"This mission will prove a new capability for future highly maneuverable, responsive in-space imaging missions for the U.S. Defense Department in a variety of possible orbits including in deep space and into the lunar regime."
This partnership stems from a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement facilitated by the Laboratory's Innovation and Partnerships Office.
LLNL will build and deliver the flight-ready payload, including two optical telescopes and an electronics module with a NVIDIA processor, within only 13 months. The LLNL team also will support imaging operations throughout the on-orbit mission.
"As Firefly scales up production of our Elytra vehicle line, we're looking forward to further collaborating with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to support our responsive on-orbit services across LEO, medium Earth orbit, geosynchronous orbit, lunar orbit and beyond," said Jason Kim, CEO of Firefly Aerospace.
"Together, our highly maneuverable Elytra vehicle and LLNL's telescopes enable on-demand imaging, space domain awareness and other responsive services that support national security, the science community and the commercial industry at large."
The mission supports the DIU's Sinequone project that aims to deliver cost-effective, responsive access to space beyond geosynchronous orbits, referred to as xGEO. xGEO orbits are deep in space, a little more than 22,000 miles above the Earth, and are used for a variety of strategic and commercial missions.
This mission in LEO is the first step to enable future responsive access and maneuverable Department of Defense capabilities in xGEO on responsive timelines.
This will be LLNL's third mission to develop rapid space payloads for the U.S. Defense Department, following on the successful Tactically Responsive Launch-2 (TacRL-2) mission in 2021 and the VICTUS HAZE mission launching as early as this year. LLNL's monolithic optics are designed to be robust and highly adaptable for a range of optical payload configurations and missions.
"We are thrilled to be selected by DIU for this mission, continuing LLNL's work to supply the Defense Department with our monolith payloads to support responsive space missions and prove out new capabilities for defense of the space domain," said John Ganino, LLNL's space hardware lead.
As a federally funded research and development center under the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration, LLNL regularly supports the U.S. Defense Department. LLNL's Space Program specifically assists the Department of Energy and the U.S. defense community with the hardest challenges in space security and space domain awareness.
"This mission is a great opportunity to showcase our design process," said Shawn Higbee, LLNL's primary investigator for the mission. "We focus on making our telescope technology available as a 'plug-and-play' component for DOD customers across the widest possible mission space, and across many bus partners."
The collaboration also illustrates the impact of LLNL intellectual property and public-private partnerships in advancing national security and U.S. economic competitiveness.
