CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., March 10 — Starfighters Space, Inc. (“Starfighters” or the “Company”) (NYSE American: FJET), the innovative aerospace company, owner and operator of the world’s largest fleet of commercial supersonic aircraft, today announced a strategic partnership with Mu-G Technologies, LLC (“Mu-GTech”) to pursue microgravity flight missions for NASA, academic institutions and commercial research customers across the United States and Canada. The collaboration combines Starfighters’ high-performance flight operations and aircraft capabilities with Mu-GTech’s expertise in parabolic flight execution, monitoring systems, and payload integration. Together, the companies intend to expand access to reduced-gravity testing environments amid increasing demand from government and commercial space programs.
The partnership follows a recent NASA Flight Opportunities “Sources Sought” notice seeking potential providers of parabolic flight services to support technology development in reduced gravity. Starfighters and Mu-GTech are jointly responding to this notice while also evaluating broader commercial opportunities beyond government-sponsored missions.
Expanding Mission Capabilities Across the Fleet
The microgravity initiative expands Starfighters’ broader strategy of leveraging its high-performance aircraft fleet across multiple mission categories, including air launch to space, hypersonic testing, advanced research support and specialized flight services. By expanding into microgravity operations, the Company aims to diversify fleet utilization while serving high-demand aerospace, defense, and space technology markets.
Executive Commentary:
“This partnership reflects our commitment to expanding the ways we deploy our high-performance aircraft to serve growing aerospace and space technology markets,” said Tim Franta, Chief Executive Officer of Starfighters. “By combining our operational capabilities with Mu-GTech’s parabolic flight expertise, we are positioning Starfighters to support increased demand for reliable microgravity testing. We are equally focused on delivering strong ‘return on science’ for researchers – ensuring that flight profiles, duration and environmental quality are optimized to meet the evolving needs of our government, academic and commercial customers.”
Robert Ward, Founder of Mu-G Technologies, added, “By integrating Mu-GTech’s flight control and monitoring systems with Starfighters’ aircraft performance envelope, we have the opportunity to evaluate new approaches to delivering high-quality reduced-gravity environments. This capability can provide longer-duration parabolas for reduced-gravity research than have traditionally been available, further advancing the nation’s space research capabilities. We look forward to advancing this capability in support of NASA and the broader research community.”
Building a Dual-Track Microgravity Capability
As part of its expansion into microgravity flight services, Starfighters is developing a dual-track operational approach in collaboration with Mu-GTech, designed to support near-term customer missions while evaluating long-term scalability:
- Dedicated Microgravity Aircraft: Acquisition and operation of an aircraft optimized specifically for parabolic flight missions. Under this model, Starfighters would oversee flight operations while Mu-GTech would manage customer engagement and payload integration.
- F-104-Based Microgravity Profile: Integration of Mu-GTech’s proprietary monitoring systems and software into Starfighters’ Lockheed F-104 aircraft to evaluate whether the platform’s high-speed and high-altitude performance can extend microgravity duration and improve flight quality.
The companies intend to conduct flight validation and data collection to assess operational performance, research quality metrics and commercial scalability.
Understanding Microgravity Flight
Microgravity conditions are created during precisely controlled parabolic flight maneuvers in which an aircraft follows a specialized arc trajectory, producing brief periods of weightlessness inside the cabin. Each parabola typically generates approximately 20–25 seconds of reduced gravity, allowing researchers to test space-bound technologies, materials, biological experiments and instrumentation in a real-world environment prior to orbital deployment. Enhanced speed and altitude performance of the F-104 aircraft will improve the duration and consistency of these reduced-gravity periods, which could be valuable for certain advanced research applications.
