Entire Staff Released On Short Notice

A Texas company developing a launch vehicle for small satellites has furloughed its entire staff in what it describes as a "funding setback" that could mean the sale of the company.

Space News reports that the move was announced by Firefly Space Systems on Twitter. "Firefly Space Systems in recent weeks experienced a setback on funding, which caused us to take necessary action to maintain cash-flow equilibrium and position our company for future success. We are reviewing options with our financial partners and will be communicating updates to our employees in as close to real time as possible. We will update the media as soon as a resolution is reached," the company said.

Company co-founder and CEO Thomas Markusic told Space News that the investor that backed out was their one of two in negotiations for the Series A funding round. He said negotiations which had been going on for a year had been finalized when the investor, which Markusic did not name, "dropped out at absolutely the last minute" leaving the company with only half its Series A funding in place. He would only say that the investor that dropped out was "European", and that Brexit may have had some influence on the decision. Markusic said that the message they received was that the investor was simply going "in a different strategic direction."

The company's most recent SEC filing show it had raised nearly $19.1 million of a planned round of just over $38 million.

As recently as September 28, Firefly Space Systems announced that it had successfully completed over 50 hot fire tests of its combustor, including multiple full mission duty cycle (“MDC”) tests. “In less than three years, we have built our Texas team to over 160 world-class engineers, constructed state-of-the-art engineering and test facilities, designed a complete rocket (Alpha) to PDR level, and built and tested key vehicle technologies, such as composite tanks, avionics and engines,” Markusic said in a news release announcing the milestone.

A year ago, the company was selected by NASA to conduct a demonstration CubeSat launch by March 2018. The Venture Class Launch Services (VCLS) contract to Firefly was valued at $5.5 million.

Firefly is a small satellite launch company located in Cedar Park, TX which was created to provide low-cost, high-performance space launch capability for the underserved small satellite market, where secondary-payload launches are often the only option. The Firefly team consists of highly experienced aerospace engineers that have spent the better part of the past decade working at NASA and various New Space companies, including SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic.

(Image from Firefly Space Systems news release)

FMI: www.fireflyspace.com