TLDR
- Firefly Aerospace (FLY) stock climbed about 6% Wednesday morning.
- The company signed a commercial payload deal with Starcloud.
- Starcloud’s SC-1L processor will test AI computing in lunar orbit.
- The mission will fly aboard Firefly’s Elytra orbital vehicle.
- Launch is targeted for no earlier than 2028.
Firefly Aerospace (FLY) stock rose about 6% Wednesday morning. The move followed news of a commercial agreement with Starcloud to test AI computing in lunar orbit.
The deal gives Firefly another line of business beyond landing and transportation services. Starcloud’s computing payload will fly aboard Firefly’s Elytra orbital vehicle.
The mission is targeted for no earlier than 2028. It’s designed to show whether the tech could eventually support data centers near the Moon.
Starcloud’s SC-1L processor will receive data from Firefly’s Solux vision system. It will then perform AI computing in orbit and send the processed results back to Earth.
Starcloud already proved out similar AI computing work in low Earth orbit. This mission pushes that same idea much farther out, all the way to the Moon.
How the Mission Fits Together
The Starcloud payload will join Firefly’s third lunar mission. Elytra will first act as a transfer vehicle and communications relay for the company’s Blue Ghost lander.
That lander is set to touch down at the Moon’s Gruithuisen Domes. It’s part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.
Once that job is done, Firefly plans to keep Elytra parked in lunar orbit for five years. During that time it would support other commercial and government payloads, plus imaging work.
Ezra Feilden, Starcloud’s cofounder and CTO, said the company had already validated running and training AI models on GPUs in low Earth orbit. He said the plan now is to bring that same proven tech to lunar orbit.
Firefly’s Solux vision system lets spacecraft track their orientation and navigate autonomously. That matters in deep space, where GPS signals simply don’t reach.
Other Moon Business Firefly Is Building
Firefly is also building out its Ocula lunar imaging service. That program is meant to handle surface mapping, mineral detection and reconnaissance work.
The company recently struck a separate collaboration with NVIDIA. That partnership will process Ocula data right on Elytra using an NVIDIA Jetson module, before sending results back across roughly 240,000 miles to Earth.
Trimming that data load before transmission could make the whole imaging operation faster and more efficient. It’s a practical fix for a very long-distance communication problem.
The Starcloud agreement adds one more customer use case for Elytra as Firefly tries to build lasting infrastructure around the Moon. This particular mission marks the second Elytra vehicle the company plans to send into lunar orbit.
The first Elytra vehicle is set to launch with Blue Ghost Mission 2. That flight is targeted for no earlier than 2027, a year ahead of the Starcloud demo mission.
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