What to know about Cedar Park-based Firefly Aerospace

Firefly Aerospace launched six years ago with the goal of building small and medium rockets and sending them into space.

The company won early support from the Cedar Park City Council, which approved a $1.2 million economic incentives deal in 2014 to land Firefly’s corporate headquarters and research and development facility.

The vote came shortly after Firefly announced it had bought 200 acres of farmland near the unincorporated community of Briggs in Burnet County to test its rockets.

Thanks to Google, we can watch Firefly’s Briggs, Texas site transition from a cow pasture to a world-class small launch vehicle test and production facility. We’re looking forward to enabling the next generation of LEO imaging constellations with the Firefly Alpha launch vehicle! pic.twitter.com/u6xASdMtBW

— Firefly Aerospace (@Firefly_Space) January 17, 2020

Firefly on Thursday said that during a test of a launch vehicle Wednesday at the Burnet County site, the company “experienced a test anomaly resulting in a small fire on our test stand.” The incident led to evacuations of nearby residents, but Firefly executives said there was no explosion and that “at no time was there any risk to individuals on site or the community.”

Firefly largely flew below the radar until last year, when NASA named it as one of nine companies to help the space agency return to the moon.

NASA said it chose multiple companies for its moon project because it’s hoping that competition can spur faster and safer innovation. Firefly is developing and testing new technology in an effort to provide rockets to NASA or other agencies.

Some other things to know about Firefly:

– Firefly is competing to deliver NASA instruments, experiments and other exploratory tools to the moon. NASA is planning to use the trips as a testing ground before it moves ahead with similar missions to Mars.

– Firefly’s founder and CEO is Tom Markusic, who was once a NASA research scientist and has worked for space companies including Jeff Bezo’s space technology company Blue Origin.

– Last February, Firefly established a launch site at Cape Canaveral in Florida, and in March, the startup signed a contract with Airbus to aid the European aerospace conglomerate with its space exploration initiatives.

– Firefly is concentrating on a 95-foot-tall rocket named Alpha. After Alpha launches, the company has said it will focus on a larger rocket named Beta — the one Firefly envisions completing moon missions.

– The company said in May that it had recently achieved a five-minute test of its boosters, a milestone it said proved its rocket can function properly during the critical climb into space.

– The company faces a number of rivals in the small-launch market, including Virgin Orbit, based in Long Beach, Calif., Rocket Lab, based in Huntington Beach, Calif., and Vector Launch, based in Burlingame, Calif.

– Firefly has raised about $100 million from investors including Noosphere Ventures, a California-based asset management firm.