Firefly Aerospace has signed a deal worth more than $1.3 billion with AST SpaceMobile to supply rocket engines, license the engine design and provide engineering support for a new heavy-lift rocket.

The agreement, announced on Friday 6 November, covers 36 engines — 27 Miranda engines and nine vacuum-variant Vira engines — for AST SpaceMobile's first three rockets, plus a licence for AST SpaceMobile to manufacture the engines itself.

A new rocket called Blacklift

The engines will power Blacklift, a reusable 20-ton rocket AST SpaceMobile is building itself to launch its BlueBird satellites for a space-based mobile broadband network. The rocket would sit in the same class as SpaceX's Falcon 9 and United Launch Alliance's Vulcan, with a first flight targeted for late 2028 and up to five BlueBird satellites per launch.

AST SpaceMobile will pay $800 million upfront for the licence and services — $400 million in cash and 10 million to 14 million Class A shares — plus $250 million for the engines and $250 million for engineering support over three years. Firefly keeps full ownership of the engine intellectual property.

Shares jump on the deal

Firefly shares rose about 20% in early trading on Friday after the announcement. The deal is worth more than twice Firefly's $563.7 million order backlog at the end of June.

AST SpaceMobile will build the engines at a new US manufacturing facility and plans an unveiling event for Blacklift in New York on 12 November. Firefly will discuss the agreement on its third-quarter earnings call on 10 November, and AST SpaceMobile reports its own results on 9 November.