IAF Excellence in Industry Award 2026

The IAF Excellence in Industry Award is intended to distinguish commercial industry organizations, whether members or non-members of the IAF, worldwide, for introducing innovative space technologies to the global marketplace. Recipients of this award are recognized throughout the space industry for successfully executing landmark space missions.

The IAF Excellence in Industry Award 2026 is bestowed to

Firefly Aerospace

On 2 March 2025, Firefly Aerospace made history as the first commercial company to successfully land on the Moon. Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander delivered 10 NASA science and technology instruments to the Moon’s surface and enabled several first-of-its-kind demonstrations, including tracking GPS signals on the Moon for the first time, unlocking new ways to mitigate hazardous lunar dust, taking X-ray imagery of Earth’s magnetosphere from Moon, and robotically drilling and collecting science deeper into the lunar surface than ever before. Firefly completed all mission objectives and performed several bonus operations, including capturing incredible imagery of a total solar eclipse on March 14 when the Earth blocked the sun and cast a shadow on the lunar surface for over two hours of totality. The team also captured the lunar sunset on March 16, providing data on how lunar dust levitates and creates a lunar horizon glow first documented by Eugene Cernan on Apollo 17. Following the sunset, Blue Ghost operated 5 hours into the lunar night as designed. In total, Blue Ghost sent nearly 120 gigabytes of data back to Earth, significantly surpassing the mission requirements and unlocking new insights that will have a substantial impact on future human and robotic missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 not only marked the longest commercial operations on the Moon to date but also set the tone for the future of commercial exploration across cislunar space.

The IAF Excellence in Industry Award 2026 – Small & Medium Enterprise Category is bestowed to

Lunar Outpost

MAPP (Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform) is Lunar Outpost’s customizable exploration-class lunar rover. Rugged, reliable, and spaceflight-proven, MAPP enables governmental, commercial, and scientific partners to go farther and achieve more on the Moon. From deploying critical infrastructure to delivering instruments for breakthrough science, MAPP turns lunar ambitions into action. In 2025, MAPP made history during Lunar Outpost’s Lunar Voyage 1 (LV1) at the Moon’s South Pole. It became the first U.S. rover teleoperated on the lunar surface and in cislunar space. During the mission, MAPP collected and downlinked critical data, including multiple images, and achieved TRL 9 for key rover systems and subsystems. The mission also marked the first successful commercialization of a lunar rover system, partnering with NASA, LEGO, adidas/Juventus, Nokia, MIT, and others. Lunar Voyage 2 (LV2) in 2026 will send another MAPP rover to Reiner Gamma to investigate a mysterious magnetic anomaly in partnership with NASA and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. The Lunar Voyage 3 (LV3) MAPP rover is already through critical design review and will scale commercial operations. Launching with Artemis IV, Lunar Voyage 5 (LV5) MAPP will support NASA’s DUSTER investigation. It will become the first robotic rover to deploy alongside astronauts to conduct dust and plasma science—advancing the goal of a sustained human presence on the Moon.