Aphelion Aerospace secures investment from The Mercury Group and Founder Advisors

Aphelion Aerospace, based in Denver, Colorado, USA, is establishing itself as the one-stop-shop for low-cost small satellite assembly and integration, and on-demand launch operations from practically anywhere around the world. Aphelion announced today that it has received significant investment from strategic investors including The Mercury Group of North Carolina and Founder Advisors of Colorado. These investments represent the first of several that are starting to materialize as part of Aphelion’s Series Seed which the company is running in parallel with their equity crowdfunding campaign on StartEngine.

Aphelion Aerospace announce investment from The Mercury Group of North Carolina and Founder Advisors of Colorado.

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Ben West of The Mercury Group explains why he chose to invest in Aphelion Aerospace and join the mission to democratize access to space.

Ben West of The Mercury Group explains why he chose to invest in Aphelion Aerospace and join the mission to democratize access to space.

Aphelion CEO Miguel Ayala and CTO Matthew Travis indicate that these investments will help them continue pushing forward with the development of their suborbital launch vehicle technology demonstrator. They plan to conduct low-altitude suborbital demonstration launches by the end of the year to prove out their green non-toxic, non-cryogenic propulsion technology in flight.

Based on the caliber and background of Aphelion Aerospace announced that Edward Mango, former Program Manager their board advisors and early investors, it is clear that the Aphelion team is positioning to become a strong player in the space industry. Last year, of the NASA Commercial Crew Transportation Program had joined their board of advisors. Mr. Mango is one of the key people behind the success of SpaceX from the NASA side. Aphelion also announced that Kevin Rice, former Director of Business Management at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Lockheed Martin Skunk Works had joined their board of advisors. Mr. Rice practically wrote the book on business management for NASA. In addition, Aphelion Aerospace announced that Geoff Brim, former VP of Product Management at Deutsche Telekom had joined their board of advisors. Mr. Brim was the evangelist behind digital transformation, data science, artificial intelligence technologies, and robotics at Deutsche Telekom.

Video of Ben West’s testimonial

Now come Aphelion’s visionary early investors. Ben West of The Mercury Group is a United States Air Force Veteran. Before his many years in the world of investment and finance, he was an F117A and F16 Crew Chief. Thanks to this background, he was well aware that military fighter jets use hydrazine in their emergency power units. He had intimate knowledge of working with hydrazine which is extremely toxic and thus costly and slow to deal with. He was also aware that other uses of hydrazine include spacecraft propulsion. Hearing that Aphelion had developed a propulsion technology that could essentially replace anything hydrazine powered was like music to his ears. Therefore, he feels excited to back Aphelion with early investment and plans to continue supporting Aphelion along the journey to bring this new technology to market.

The Founder Advisors team, who in addition to investing in Aphelion, provide advisory services to the leadership, is composed of former aerospace and tech industry entrepreneurs and executives. Some are veterans of the United States Navy and have spent years in launch vehicle development at companies such as Lockheed Martin. These guys truly understand and value the business model that Aphelion Aerospace is structuring for bundled small satellite integration and launch services.

For more information about Aphelion Aerospace please visit: https://aphelionaerospace.com