Several former employees of suborbital spaceflight company Armadillo Aerospace have formed a new company to carry on Armadillo’s work developing reusable suborbital launch vehicles. Exos Aerospace formally announced its plans at an event May 14 at Armadillo’s former facilities at the Caddo Mills Municipal Airport northeast of Dallas.
Exos Aerospace, according to the company website, plans to develop “state-of-the-art reusable vehicles” for commercial suborbital spaceflight applications, but has not disclosed additional details about their plans. The company’s founders include Russell Blink, who was vice president of engineering at Armadillo Aerospace, and Phil Eaton, the former vice president for operations at Armadillo.
Armadillo had also been developing reusable suborbital launch vehicles, with the last test flight of its STIG-B rocket in early 2013 from Spaceport America in New Mexico. In August, company founder John Carmack announced that he had put the company into “hibernation mode” because of a lack of funding.
