Masten Space is a privately held spaceflight development company headquartered in Mojave, California. The company was founded in 2004 by Dave Masten, now CEO, and John Garvey, CTO. The company’s first rocket engine was developed in 2006. In 2009, Masten won the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge (LLC) Level 1 competition with their Xombie reusable rocket. With the LLC prize money, they built and flew the first liquid-fueled rocket to win the event’s top award in 2010 with their vehicle named “Xoie”. This was followed up by winning first place at Level 2 of the LLC in 2011 with their “SpaceShipOne” clone vehicle called “Xaero”. In 2012, they placed second at Level 2-A. They are also one of five teams remaining in NASA’s Commercial Crew Development Round 2 (CCDev2), which is developing new technologies to transport astronauts to low Earth orbit and return them safely back to Earth.
Masten Space is currently working on several different projects including: developing a reusable suborbital spacecraft known as Xeus; continuing technology development for NASA under CCDev2; conducting research and development for DARPA’s ALASA program;and flying payloads to microgravity environments for various government and commercial customers.[15