Firefly Aerospace - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Transcript

Speaker 1

Greetings. Welcome to the Firefly Aerospace second quarter 2025 financial results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal remarks. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press *11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press *11 again. Please note this conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to Michael Sheetz, Firefly's Director of Investor Relations. Michael, you may begin.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Operator. Hello there. I'm Michael Sheetz, and welcome to Firefly Aerospace's inaugural quarterly financial results call. I'm pleased to be joined on the call by CEO Jason Kim and CFO Darren Ma as we report our second quarter 2025 results for the period ending June 30, 2025. Today's call will include forward-looking statements, including but not limited to statements the company will make about its future financial and operating performance, growth strategy, and market outlook. Actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause the actual results and trends to differ materially are set forth in the annual and quarterly reports filed with the SEC. Firefly Aerospace assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their respective dates. Also in this call, we will discuss both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures.

A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in the second quarter 2025 filing. Unless otherwise stated, financial information referenced in this call will be non-GAAP. Our earnings press release, SEC filings, and a replay of today's call can be found on our investor relations website at investors.fireflyspace.com. Now, I'll turn the call over to Jason.

Speaker 5

Thank you, Michael, and welcome to our second quarter 2025 earnings call. We're proud to be reporting quarterly results for the first time on the heels of our historic IPO, the largest by a U.S. space and defense company and one of the largest of any industrials company in the 21st century, raising $1 billion in gross proceeds to supercharge our growth. For those new to our journey, Firefly Aerospace is a space and defense company delivering rockets and satellites to perform the hardest missions in space for national security, exploration, and commercial technology, built to keep America as the leader in space. Our products position us to support the $175 billion Golden Dome opportunity, as well as NASA's Moon to Mars plan. We have four revenue-generating products: our small-lift Alpha rocket, medium-lift Eclipse rocket, Blue Ghost lunar lander, and Elektra satellite orbiter.

Today, these products have a robust backlog of $1.3 billion. Our backlogs consist of high-quality customers with critical missions that shape the world we live in. Alpha is differentiated as the only operational one-ton to orbit rocket. It is the first and only rocket to successfully perform a technically responsive space launch with a 24-hour notice for the U.S. Space Force. Alpha's one-ton capability gives our customers more options to perform critical high-stakes missions to help deter threats and maintain our freedom. Earlier this year, Alpha was onboarded to the Missile Defense Agency's Mock TV 2.0 contract to launch hypersonic missile tests, further diversifying the upside opportunities to our backlog. All of Alpha's proven technologies are scaled up to our larger reusable Eclipse rocket, capable of carrying 16 tons to orbit. This medium-lift rocket is built to support commercial constellations, exploration, and the National Security Space Launch Program.

Eclipse is a right-sized launch vehicle, meeting the growing customer demand for dedicated missions. Earlier this year, Firefly Aerospace became the first company in the world to successfully land on the Moon. In total, Blue Ghost sent nearly 120 gigabytes of data back to Earth, supporting 10 NASA payloads and unlocking new insights that will have a substantial impact on future human and robotic missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Blue Ghost Mission 1 was not only the longest commercial operation on the Moon to date, but also set the tone for the future of commercial exploration across cislunar space. The other spacecraft in our portfolio is Elektra, a multi-orbit, multi-mission satellite capable of high-performance maneuvering missions. Elektra will support national security capabilities, including space domain awareness with rendezvous proximity operations, resilient long-haul communications, and high-resolution planetary observation.

Now turning to our business update, in the second quarter, we completed a host of program milestones while also winning new contracts across our product lines. I'll start with spacecraft. In April, I had the honor of testifying before the United States Congress, speaking to the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology about the success of Blue Ghost Mission 1 and its historic role in NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services Initiative. The bipartisan congressional support for more lunar missions is a welcome boon to Firefly Aerospace as we ramp up annual cargo deliveries to the Moon's surface. NASA continues to be an outstanding customer, especially as Blue Ghost delivers research and science to maximize returns on investment. Firefly Aerospace is working with NASA to pave the way for international and commercial partners to build the logistics that support the lunar economy on and around the Moon.

Firefly Aerospace is steadily working on our next lunar missions. Blue Ghost Mission 2, valued at $130 million, will deliver our lander to the far side of the Moon, marking the first such mission by a U.S. lander. The structures for this mission entered assembly in our spacecraft clean room after completing the crucial integration readiness review earlier this year. The first payloads arrived with Australian company Fleet Space delivering its Spider payload and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory delivering their user terminal. We are also conducting Spectre engine testing in preparation for Blue Ghost Mission 2. Additionally, we signed another customer to Blue Ghost Mission 2 through our contract with the United Arab Emirates Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre to fly their Rashid 2 rover. This UAE contract carries dual significance. It represents both Firefly Aerospace's expansion of Blue Ghost services to commercial and international customers.

It also shows how we can add value to core NASA contracts by selling additional capacity on our lander. In December, NASA awarded Firefly Aerospace's third Blue Ghost contract, valued at $180 million. Our team completed the systems requirements review, allowing us to move forward with design and development of the lander system. As you will hear more about later, NASA awarded a $177 million contract for Blue Ghost Mission 4 in July. All of these missions support the growing NASA Eclipse Initiative, which recently received a $250 million budget increase for fiscal year 2026. Moving to the Elektra product line under Firefly Aerospace's spacecraft business, in the second quarter, we secured a contract from the Pentagon's Defense Innovation Unit for Elektra Mission 3, flying in 2027 to demonstrate responsive rendezvous proximity operations using our Elektra vehicle. This mission positions us well for upcoming opportunities like the U.S.

Space Force's RGXX geosynchronous space domain awareness program of record. Notably, the high thrust maneuverability, ample fuel reserves, and generous payload capacity of Elektra are well suited for future Golden Dome space-based interceptor hosts. We also unveiled our ocular imaging service, which Elektra will host on upcoming Blue Ghost missions. This groundbreaking commercial lunar imaging capability, enabled through telescopes provided by Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, uses our Elektra vehicles in lunar orbit to provide high-resolution data. Oculus will map the surface of the Moon and provide space domain awareness services for customers to purchase during five-year missions. Finally, we're looking forward to Elektra's first demonstration mission. The spacecraft completed testing and is preparing to launch. Elektra Mission 1 will test and validate Elektra's core capabilities, as well as demonstrate Extenti Phantom Ride dispenser for the National Reconnaissance Office.

Shifting to the launch site of our business, the FAA approved Alpha to return to flight. Alongside the FAA, government agencies, customers, and industry experts, our independent review board conducted a thorough mishap investigation that found Alpha's flight safety system performed as expected through all phases of flight and posed no risk to public safety. In the words of our Alpha Chief Engineer, "Technical challenges are not roadblocks. They are catalysts and opportunities to improve." As a result, we increased the thermal protection system thickness on stage one and will reduce our angle of attack during key phases of the flight. Above all, safety and quality are of the highest importance. With FAA approval to return to flight and corrective actions implemented, Firefly Aerospace is now working to determine the next available launch window for Alpha Flight 7.

We are ramping Alpha flight cadence to meet the strong demand for launch services, especially for responsive national security missions and our best-in-class customers. We expect to launch Alpha two more times this year and are building ahead with several additional Alpha vehicles in production. Earlier this year, Alpha won a U.S. Space Force award for the Victus Soul mission, a $22 million contract under the growing Tactically Responsive Space program. That program received a $135 million budget increase for fiscal year 2026. In the second quarter, Alpha won an award from the Air Force Research Laboratory. This contract will work on developing a ceramic rocket engine nozzle, which aims to reduce nozzle mass by up to 50% through the use of lightweight materials.

We are finding ways to enhance performance as we scale up Alpha production to deliver a more robust vehicle and a faster launch cadence for our customers. Additionally, the United States and Sweden signed a technology safeguards agreement. We have already partnered with the Swedish Space Corporation to launch Alpha vehicles from Europe. This critical regulatory milestone unlocks international growth opportunities and supports higher Alpha launch cadences. Moving to our Eclipse launch vehicle, Northrop Grumman invested $50 million into Firefly Aerospace to further advance production. Alongside Northrop Grumman, we continue to make progress in developing Eclipse flight hardware with qualification testing underway. Eclipse is steadily completing milestones to our inaugural launch next year. We built and fit checked the first stage tanks for Eclipse's debut flight, and we've begun structural and load testing of the engine bay that will house our seven Miranda engines.

These powerful Miranda engines are progressing through our rigorous test campaign, with more than 90 hot fire tests completed to date, including full power and mission duty cycle firings. Our team is hard at work executing on Eclipse development, especially as we prepare to compete for national security launches alongside our partner, Northrop Grumman. Our 200-foot tall, 15-foot wide Eclipse fills an important gap for dedicated missions for our customers. With that business summary, I'll turn it over to Darren Ma for a review of the second quarter financials. Thank you, Jason Kim. With this being our first earnings call, I'm going to review the financials from the second quarter and discuss our revenue outlook for 2025. A more detailed presentation of our financial results is contained in the financial tables included in the news release we published earlier.

Before we start, I will take a few minutes to explain how operational metrics drive the financial performance of the company. Key operational metrics include the number of launches and execution on key program milestones across both our spacecraft and launch businesses. For example, in our spacecraft business, we focus on delivery milestones because the revenue is generally recognized as a percentage of completion under each contract. For the launch business, we focus on the number of launches. Revenue for our operational Alpha vehicle is recognized at a point in time when the launch occurs. For Eclipse, which is in development, we recognize revenue as a percentage of completion based on program milestones as part of the Northrop Grumman partnership. Once the Eclipse vehicle is operational, we will recognize revenue as launches occur.

It is important to note that the timing of revenue could be impacted by things that are outside of our control, especially on the launch side. Now turning to our second quarter financial results, we generated revenue of $15.5 million. This compares with $55.9 million in the first quarter and $21.1 million in the same quarter a year ago. As a reminder, the successful launch of Blue Ghost Mission 1 drove an increase to our first quarter revenue. Spacecraft revenue for the second quarter was $9.2 million based on achieving key contract milestones. Launch revenue was $6.3 million, driven by non-recurring engineering for Eclipse development. We ended the second quarter with a total backlog of approximately $1.1 billion. In addition, we have a robust pipeline of revenue opportunities that is incremental to the backlog conversion.

For example, our backlog increased in July of this year when we secured our fourth lunar mission from NASA of approximately $177 million, bringing our current backlog to $1.3 billion. Second quarter gross margin was 25.7%. This compares with 4% in the prior quarter and 14% in the same quarter a year ago. The sequential gross margin increase was primarily driven by a customer-requested contract modification that results in an overall increase in contract value for our Blue Ghost Mission 2. I should point out that gross margin in the near term could fluctuate from quarter to quarter based on the timing of Alpha launches and primarily because of the current accounting classification of our Alpha launches. As a reminder, Alpha costs are currently expensed R&D.

In the future, we expect Alpha costs to be capitalized as inventory and recognized as cost of goods sold at the same time as launch. Non-GAAP operating expenses for the second quarter were $55.8 million, compared with $57.9 million in the first quarter and $51.4 million in the same quarter a year ago. We expect operating expenses for the remainder of 2025 to increase, driven by Eclipse development, Alpha material purchases, and spacecraft development. The primary difference between GAAP and non-GAAP operating expenses are one-time expenses, such as IPO expenses, stock-based compensation expense, and other one-time expenses. Non-GAAP operating loss was $51.8 million, compared with the loss of $55.7 million in the first quarter and the loss of $48.5 million in the second quarter a year ago. Our non-GAAP net loss in Q2 was $57.1 million.

This compares with a net loss of $56.3 million in the prior quarter and $53 million in the same quarter a year ago. Adjusted EBITDA in the second quarter was -$47.9 million, compared with -$47.1 million in the first quarter and -$47.7 million in the second quarter a year ago. Turning to our balance sheet, as of June 30, our cash and cash equivalents and restricted cash were approximately $221.5 million. While we are not presenting an updated balance sheet as of today, I do want to note that we raised nearly $1 billion in gross proceeds through our successful IPO in August. Following the IPO, we used $148.1 million to pay off our term loan, leaving us with approximately $1 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash as of the end of August.

In addition, after the close of the IPO, we secured a $125 million revolving line of credit, which gives us additional liquidity to support our growth objectives. CapEx was $9.2 million, compared with $2.7 million in the first quarter and $17.3 million in the second quarter a year ago. The sequential increase was primarily driven by investments for Eclipse infrastructure and our East Coast launch facility in Wallops, Virginia. Free cash flow was -$37.3 million, compared with -$59.2 million in the first quarter and -$37.6 million in the second quarter a year ago. The sequential improvement was primarily driven by customer payment for Blue Ghost Mission 1. Now turning to our revenue guidance for fiscal 2025, we currently expect revenue will be in a range of $133 million to $145 million.

In summary, our capital-efficient operating model, combined with disciplined execution, continues to support revenue growth, margin expansion, and strong cash flow conversion potential over time. Firefly Aerospace's fortified balance sheet positions us to scale our market-leading products and fuel strategic growth in the years ahead. Now I will turn the call back over to Jason for his closing remarks.

Speaker 3

Since the end of the second quarter, Firefly is pushing forward with additional wins. NASA's award of Blue Ghost Mission 4 in July represents back-to-back lunar lander contracts for our team. The contract will see Blue Ghost deliver five NASA payloads to the Moon's South Pole in 2029 and increases our backlog to $1.3 billion. As with Blue Ghost Missions 2 and 3, an Elektra will support our fourth mission. Our Blue Ghost lander enables NASA to evaluate the Moon's South Pole resources, such as hydrogen and water, as well as study the radiation and thermal environment. We are honored to be supporting yet another critical NASA mission. We are proud to support the United States building a sustainable, long-term presence on the lunar surface and fortify U.S. leadership of the ultimate high ground.

In late breaking as of this morning, I am pleased to share that NASA added $10 million to our Blue Ghost Mission 1 contract as an addendum to acquire high-value data. This goes above and beyond the base contract to include large amounts of lunar surface images. This is significant as it shows how each NASA Eclipse mission has opportunities for additional high-margin recurring revenue generation. This addendum contract also demonstrates the market for our Oculus commercial lunar imaging service, deploying as part of upcoming Blue Ghost missions starting in 2026. As a U.S. Air Force veteran, I'm proud that Firefly is an American-based company with American manufacturing and supported by American suppliers. Firefly is vertically integrated with production hardware facilities and engineering teams that are based in Austin, Texas.

The unique co-location of our manufacturing, testing, and integration allows us to deliver our products on cost, schedule, and at increasing capacity. We have core technology advantages through our carbon composite technology used across all of our product lines, as well as patented, scalable, tap-off cycle engines that are shared across our launch vehicles. For those who are new to Firefly, thank you for joining us in this journey. For the many long-time supporters, thank you for your years of belief and continued backing. To our Fireflies, thank you for your bold, can-do attitude and your dedication to our mission. Together, we inspire the world, unlock new categories in space, and deliver critical national security capabilities for America and its allies. Thank you, Jason. Operator, we're ready to take questions.

Speaker 1

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder to ask a question, please press *11 on your telephone, then wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press *11 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from a line of Sheila Cayuglu with Jefferies. The line is open.

Good morning, guys, and good afternoon. Congratulations on a successful launch in more ways than one. Maybe if we could start on the first question. With the FAA approving return to flight for Alpha, how are you thinking about the timing of flight seven and eight, and how does that feed into your targeted launches for 2026? What are the range of potential outcomes for next year, you know, thinking about production capacity versus the current backlog?

Speaker 5

Thank you, Sheila. We received our FAA return to flight determination at the end of August. We expect to launch flight seven in the coming weeks. If you saw our slides in the Alpha slide, you could see that flight seven is in a mature state right next to flight eight in a mature state. We keep increasing our production capacity, and we're building ahead as well for 2026. We're working closely with the range and our customer, Lockheed Martin, to share more details on the mission and payload soon. Above all, safety and quality are of the highest importance.

Got it. Maybe if we could talk about Golden Dome. We've heard a lot about it, but some companies are starting to solidify what it could mean. How do you think about the opportunity, and what news should we look to hear? What is the framework and expected timing you're thinking about as it relates to Golden Dome?

Thank you, Sheila. Yeah, being an Air Force veteran, Golden Dome is something near and dear to my heart and the Fireflies. We have three product lines at the company that are well positioned to support the Golden Dome architecture. First off, Alpha. It is a commercially available rocket, and we're increasing our production capacity to deliver more and more Alphas per year. It can support launching surrogate targets for the Golden Dome missions. It could also support launching test missions of things like hypersonic missiles, as well as space-based interceptors. It also can serve as an operational rocket as well. As you know, we're the first and only to launch a 24-hour call-up mission on the Victus Knox mission, and that's something that is helpful for the Golden Dome mission.

On the spacecraft side, our Elektra spacecraft, with its ample fuel reserves and its high thrust and maneuverability, as well as its payload carrying capacity, is well suited to support space-based interceptor host missions. There's optionality there to provide that as a prime or as a subcontractor. Finally, Eclipse. It's a 16-ton rocket. It is capable of launching constellations, whether they be sensors or space-based interceptors in the future. That's part of onboarding onto the National Security Space Launch Program.

Great. OK, thank you so much.

Speaker 1

Thank you. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Seth Seifman with JP Morgan. Your line is open.

Hey, thanks very much, and good afternoon. Wanted to ask, starting off, maybe if you could talk a little bit about expectations for either EBITDA or free cash flow for the year.

Speaker 5

Yeah, hey, Seth. This is Darren. As of now, we're guiding to annual revenue. We're focused on hitting the operational metrics, which is, as we discussed previously, very much linked to our financial performance. That's essentially what we're guiding to right now.

OK. Maybe a little bit more qualitatively, as we think about the path to Eclipse launch and kind of have the potential perhaps to do that next year, can you walk us through maybe some of the milestones along the way as we think about going from where we are now to the collaboration you'll have with Northrop Grumman next year to get that launch up?

Yeah, Seth, this is Jason. Thank you for that question. We're extremely grateful and excited to be partnered with Northrop Grumman. They're our co-developer on the Eclipse program. As you remember, in the second quarter, Northrop Grumman invested a first-of-a-kind investment into Firefly Aerospace of $50 million. We are working on the milestones towards our inaugural launch. We've completed our Miranda flight engine testing. As of recently, over 90 hot fire tests that include full mission duty cycle hot fire testing at 206 seconds, as well as at 100% thrust. We're going to move into qualifying that engine and then building the flight engines. We also have developed the engine bay, and that's undergoing testing. Once we complete testing there, we would integrate the seven flight Miranda engines with the engine bay. We've also done fit checks of the integration of our liquid oxygen tank and our RP1 tank.

We've completed the integration of that, and the next step would be to mate the engine bay with the tanks and the aft section. From there, we would deliver that to Northrop Grumman to integrate with the second stage, complete the payload fairing with the payload, integrate the payload, and jointly conduct the launch campaign at our Wallops pad.

Great. Great. Excellent. Thanks very much.

Speaker 1

Thank you. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Colin Canfield with Cantor. Your line is open.

Hey, thank you for the question. If you could maybe update us on the timeline for National Security Space Launch Program Lane 1 and maybe kind of talk about how the team is thinking about that proposal ahead of the December window, and specifically what are customers saying about the time frame from transition from onboarding to initial contract award. Thank you.

Speaker 5

Thank you, Colin, for that question. We wanted to provide a credible offering. One of the requirements of onboarding into the U.S. Space Force's National Security Space Launch Program, Lane 1, is to have a credible plan for the first launch. We anticipate that first launch being in the late 2026 time frame. We are pursuing, along with our co-developer Northrop Grumman, a proposal for late this year to be submitted. Once onboarded, you would need to have a first launch before bidding the first task orders, and the first task orders would be around after the first quarter of 2027.

Got it. OK. In terms of the tactically responsive space line item and the supplemental that was mentioned in the script, the $135 million, can you maybe discuss the velocity of the money and what contracting officers are saying with respect to potential near-term unlock in terms of awards? I think one of the things that we've gotten feedback from other supplemental-oriented players is that they're seeing a pretty fast acceleration of that related spend versus base accounts. Happy to hear what your experience sounds like.

Yeah, we're very positive on this additional $135 million that was put into the reconciliation budget because of our Victus Knox experience, and we subsequently have been put on contract for Victus Hayes and Victus Soul. We're very much looking forward to working with the Space Safari Space Force customer on the next missions. We would like to have as many of our Alpha rockets as we can fit in storage at our Vandenberg Space Force Base so that we could be ready at any time to launch more tactically responsive space launches in a 24-hour timeline, so that we can continue to deter our U.S. rivals.

Got it. Thank you for the call. I appreciate it.

Speaker 1

Thank you. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Christine Lueg with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Great. Hey, good afternoon, everyone. Maybe on Alpha, you know, you called out that you're going to change the design of the reinforcement of the thermal protection. I was wondering how much of a design change is that? Is that major or minor, and how mature is your progress there? Then, you talked about changing the angle of attack on the rocket launch. Did that change what kind of missions you could fulfill for your customers?

Speaker 5

Hi, Christine. It's Jason. There is no change to the design. It's just adding more layers of the thermal protection system to the bottom of the first stage, and it's negligible in terms of mass. The second part of that question is how does this change the angle of attack? We can control that at different critical phases of the flight profile, and that is something that we can plan for and can control as well.

Great. Super helpful. If I could do a follow-on, you guys called out the addendum contract, $10 million from NASA on Blue Ghost Mission 1. I was wondering, are there more opportunities to sell more data to other governments and commercial customers? Can you size the opportunity of these kinds of potential annuities that you could get from these kinds of additional contracts?

Thank you for that question, Christine. The answer is yes. At Firefly, we own that data, and we are able to sell that commercial data license to multiple customers. This was really helpful for us because it was the first of many data sales that we planned to do. You heard Oculus, and that is something that is very core to the Oculus service that we unveiled a couple of months ago. I'll pass it on to Darren to talk more. Yeah, Christine, I'd say engineering change proposals are common across our firm-fixed price contracts. For example, on Blue Ghost Mission 1, prior to this data buy, the team's already been executing on engineering change proposals, increasing that contract from $93.3 million up over $100 million over time. We fully expect this trend to continue.

It really gives us a differentiated revenue stream with higher margin dollars going forward with things like Oculus, as Jason mentioned.

Great. If I could sneak a third and last one. With the Blue Ghost Mission 4 contract you got this summer, how did that contract term turn out versus your expectations? Can you provide some sort of revenue recognition expectations for that since that's not launching till 2029? Also, any sort of profitability metrics that we should monitor?

Yeah, so Blue Ghost Mission 4, you know, we had two opportunities to win, one to win another additional Blue Ghost contract going forward. We did plan on winning one of the two, and it's an example of how the team has converted opportunities in the backlog. It's a significant opportunity that the team has executed on. From a revenue recognition perspective, it's recognized over a % completion basis very similar to Blue Ghost Mission 1, which you guys saw how it plays out in our financials.

Thank you.

Speaker 1

Thank you. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Fuji de Silva with Roth Capital. Your line is open.

Hi, Jason. Darren, Michael. The backlog, you just updated us on the rough mix of launch and spacecraft, and maybe more specifically within the launch, Alpha launch backlog. How much of that is national security responsive versus other, if you give some rough estimate there that would be helpful?

Speaker 5

Yeah, so today, I'd say we haven't really disclosed the split between launch and spacecraft, but if you reference how our revenue split between Q2, it was a majority of spacecraft. I'd say prior to Blue Ghost Mission 4, most of our backlog was more on the launch side. With Jason's background in the spacecraft sector, over decades of experience, we would expect that weighting to shift over time and perhaps even outpace the launch side in the future.

OK, great. I think there was earlier, there was an announcement about NASA's Viper rover launch. I'm just curious, is there a roadmap, Jason, of kind of how much capacity you can carry to the Moon with the Blue Ghost and paired up with Elektra potentially as we move toward cargo? I know you're taking the UAE rover yourselves, a larger cargo, infrastructure cargo, and then over time manned. If you could help us understand the roadmap you're planning, that'd be helpful.

Yeah, thanks, Fuji. This is just the beginning. Although we have the most number of commercial lunar payload services contracts out of any commercial company right now with NASA, we have a long-term roadmap where we build big things here at Firefly Aerospace. If you look at, for example, our Eclipse rocket, that's a 200-foot rocket by 15 feet diameter. That's a large structure. If you look at our Blue Ghost Mission 2, we just sent a full stack of our lunar lander and our DPAF with our Elektra vehicle, which sits at 22 feet high, to get environmentally tested at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. We're already building bigger and bigger things. We are able to scale our technology because we're using carbon composite structures and tanks.

All of our lunar lander technology that helped us successfully land stable and upright on Blue Ghost Mission 1 is transferable to those bigger systems. Long term, we would like to put not only lunar landers on the Moon, but more rovers, potentially light terrain vehicles, infrastructure like power plants. That is all inclusive of our lunar lander roadmap. We see more than just annual missions to the Moon, but multiple missions annually to the Moon by the end of the decade.

Appreciate the detailed color, Jason. Thanks.

Speaker 1

Thank you. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Edison Yu with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

Hey, thank you, and congratulations on the first earnings call going public. I want to ask about the strategy around potentially some M&A. You obviously raised quite a bit of money. Any kind of types of assets out there that you're kind of vetting or interested in? Maybe if you could dimension kind of the size and scope you'd be willing to do.

Speaker 5

Thank you, Edison. We look at M&A using our well-defined process as it relates to M&A targets. First and foremost, any M&A target has to fit our strategy. We have a robust long-term strategy. It also has to fit our culture, our Firefly culture, which is one of a can-do spirit, as well as speed and collaboration and technology and innovation. There are synergies that the M&A target could provide to our existing product lines. Those are things that we look for in companies.

Understood. Then follow-up question on Elektra. I think you made a reference to RGXX in the opening remarks. I was wondering if you could maybe elaborate around that. Is that supposed to be potentially a template for some future program that Elektra would go after? How should we think about that kind of reference you made?

If you recall, RGXX is a follow-on to the Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program, which once was a $6 billion program of record that the traditional prime contractors were developing. It is a requirement that is still needed going forward. Earlier this year, the Pentagon signed out an acquisition decision memo to open up the competition for the next generation mission called RGXX to commercial providers like Firefly Aerospace and bring in our transformative commercial technologies. It just so happens that earlier this year, we won a DIU contract for our Elektra Mission 3. That mission is to perform space domain awareness using rendezvous proximity operations. I already mentioned that Elektra has ample fuel reserves, high thrust maneuverability, as well as carrying capacity for different payloads. We're able to apply that same technology to the RGXX program of record.

Great. If I could sneak in one housekeeping, the $10 million extra, is that going to be recognized in 3Q as revenue? Or what's the, I guess, the rubric on that $10 million for Blue Ghost?

That's correct, Edison. We did plan for that in our roadmap.

OK, thank you.

Speaker 1

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, I am showing no further questions in the queue. I would now like to turn the call back over to Michael for closing remarks.

Speaker 3

Thank you, everyone, for attending today's call. We look forward to speaking with you all again when we report our third quarter financial results. Let's fly.

Speaker 1

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.