Startup, whose Ukrainian owner was forced to sell it to the Americans, will deliver NASA cargo to the far side of the moon

On March 14, 2023, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced the conclusion of a contract with Firefly Aerospace from Texas to deliver cargo to the far side of the moon.

Firefly Aerospace was founded by Ukrainian Maxim Polyakov. She is developing light launch vehicles to launch small satellites and cubsats. At the end of November 2021, Polyakov received a letter from the US Foreign Investment Committee requesting his investment company Noosphere Venture Partners to sell a stake in Firefly Aerospace for national security reasons. This deal was carried out in February 2022.

Firefly Aerospace will provide rocket launch that will deliver 494.5kg of cargo to the moon

The amount of the contract between NASA and Firefly Aerospace is $112 million. The treaty is part of the American lunar program Artemis. It is planned that in 2026 Firefly Aerospace will provide a rocket launch that will deliver a cargo with a total weight of 494.5 kg to the moon.

The main component of the payload will be the Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment-Night (LuSEE-Night) station. It will allow radio observations of the Universe from the far side of the Moon, which is protected from interference emanating from the Earth. Since there is no direct connection to our planet in such conditions, the Lunar Pathfinder orbital module, which is responsible for data relay, will also be withdrawn as part of the mission. It will be able to provide communication services for various lunar missions through S-band channels and via UHF, as well as provide an X-band link with. Earth The third payload will be the so-called user terminal (UT): it will set a new standard for the Proximity-1 space communication protocol in the S-band. The terminal consists of a software-defined radio station, an antenna, a network switch and a sample data source.^[1]

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