![\"Firefly](\"https:\/\/cdn.satnow.com\/news\/cover174_639183214098889766.webp\")
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Firefly Aerospace<\/strong> a market leading space and defense technology company, announced the acquisition of Space-ng a leader in AI-powered vision navigation and autonomous guidance systems. The acquisition brings proven spacecraft software and camera hardware for Firefly\u2019s Blue Ghost landers and Elytra orbital vehicles, bolstering Firefly\u2019s capabilities to advance the future of autonomous space operations for missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond.<\/p>\n Space-ng\u2019s vision navigation software was utilized during Firefly\u2019s historic Blue Ghost Mission 1 to determine position and attitude, detect hazardous lunar terrain, and autonomously redirect Blue Ghost in real-time, enabling a safe, precise touchdown within the Moon\u2019s Mare Crisium.<\/p>\n \u201cSpace-ng\u2019s vision navigation technology proved itself in the most critical moments of our descent, allowing <\/em>Blue Ghost<\/em> to autonomously perform two hazard avoidance maneuvers and safely touch down on the Moon for the first time in commercial space history,\u201d said <\/strong><\/em>Jason Kim<\/strong><\/em>, CEO of Firefly Aerospace.<\/strong> \u201cThis acquisition represents a strategic investment in both the experienced team and technologies from Space-ng that will continue to play a pivotal role in advancing autonomous space operations. We\u2019re proud to welcome Space-ng to the <\/em>Firefly<\/em> team as we work towards enabling regular, repeatable access to the Moon and beyond.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n In addition to vision navigation software, Space-ng brings high-resolution spacecraft cameras and AI compute hardware to enable advanced space domain awareness, onboard optical navigation, rendezvous and proximity operations, and docking without requiring GPS or GNSS. Firefly plans to integrate Space-ng\u2019s technologies across its fleet of lunar landers and orbital vehicles to support its growing mission manifest, including three additional lunar missions under NASA\u2019s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, another lunar mission supporting NASA MoonFall, and a space domain awareness mission for the Defense Innovation Unit.<\/p>\n \u201cBlue Ghost Mission 1 demonstrated what\u2019s possible with Space-ng\u2019s modern approach to simulation, perception, autonomy, and flight software,\u201d said <\/strong><\/em>Ethan Rublee<\/strong><\/em>, co-founder and CEO of Space-ng.<\/strong> \u201cThis acquisition allows us to scale Space-ng\u2019s products and apply them across Firefly\u2019s exciting vehicle line and mission roadmap. Together, we\u2019ll continue building an AI-first software foundation for the next era of space exploration and help execute some of the hardest missions in space.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Headquartered in Littleton, Colorado, Space-ng was founded in 2024 as a spinoff of Farm-ng, which began in 2020 providing AI-powered vision navigation and robotic solutions for the farming industry. The Space-ng team brings deep expertise in artificial intelligence, computer vision, autonomous systems, and flight software. Along with the Space-ng team, the company\u2019s co-founder and CEO, Ethan Rublee, is joining Firefly as the Chief Engineer of Software, and will oversee Firefly\u2019s spacecraft software suite. As a result of this transaction, Space-ng will be fully integrated into Firefly. Firefly will continue to offer Space-ng\u2019s vision navigation and autonomous guidance capabilities to government and commercial customers under the Firefly Aerospace brand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Firefly Aerospace a market leading space and defense technology company, announced the acquisition of Space-ng a leader in AI-powered vision navigation and autonomous guidance systems. The acquisition brings proven spacecraft software and camera hardware for Firefly\u2019s Blue Ghost landers and Elytra orbital vehicles, bolstering Firefly\u2019s capabilities to advance the future of autonomous space operations for missions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[130,26,20],"class_list":["post-21233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-ground","tag-satellite"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21233"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Also Read: What are Navigational Satellite Constellations and Their Importance in GPS, GNSS and Satellite Navigation?<\/h4>\n