Rendering of the Eclipse rocket at Wallops Island, Virginia. Photo: Firefly Aerospace

Firefly Aerospace and Northrop Grumman revealed the name of their co-developed rocket as Eclipse, alongside a $50 million investment by Northrop Grumman to advance production. 

The companies have been working together since 2022 to develop an American-built first-stage upgrade for Northrop Grumman’s Antares 330 rocket and a new medium-lift launch vehicle. 

On Thursday, the companies announced that qualification testing is underway on Eclipse flight hardware, with more than 60 Miranda engine hot fire tests performed to date.

Eclipse will first launch from Wallops Island, Virginia, “as early as 2026,” the companies said. 

The $50 million in funding is an expansion of Firefly’s Series D funding round, which stood at $175 million last fall. Firefly extended the round given “growing interest from both new and existing investors,” and the company will have more to say on the total amount soon, a spokesperson for Firefly said. 

Firefly described Eclipse as “filling a void in an underserved market,” and said it will support space station resupply, commercial spacecraft, national security missions and scientific payloads for both domestic and international markets.The medium-lift rocket is designed to deliver 16,300 kg of cargo to Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) or 3,200 kg of cargo to Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO).

Firefly Aerospace CEO Jason Kim said in a statement that Eclipse will be a fit for the U.S. Space Force’s National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Lane 1 and to launch proliferated constellations. 

“Eclipse represents two powerful forces coming together to transform the launch market with decades of flight heritage, a rapid, iterative approach, and bold innovation,” Kim commented. 

Firefly will continue to offer its small-lift Alpha launch vehicle. Alpha suffered an anomaly in its most recent launch last month and lost the customer payload. 

“Firefly is seeing growing demand for both small- and medium-lift launch services, so Eclipse will not replace Alpha but will instead supplement our Alpha rocket,” the Firefly spokesperson confirmed. 

Eclipse uses the same first stage Firefly is developing for Antares 330 and “scaled-up versions” of the propulsion systems and carbon composite structures from the Alpha rocket. 

“Eclipse builds from an evolution of both company’s heritage products over several decades,” said Kurt Eberly, director of Space Launch, Northrop Grumman. “That means we have the benefit of not starting from scratch. We’re utilizing our existing engineering standards, quality, safety, and mission assurance processes to build Eclipse as the evolutionary successor to Antares and Alpha.”

Eclipse is also designed for first stage reuse. Miles Gray, Eclipse chief engineer, said in a statement that the vehicle layout and Miranda engine design is “optimized for return to launch site and propulsive landing of the first stage vehicle,” and the team is taking an “iterative approach” to developing reuse capabilities. 

Cal Biesecker of Defense Daily contributed to this article