Singapore’s rocket company, Equatorial Space, welcomes three new senior engineers to the company’s growing team.
Dr. Carlos O. Maidana is the Company’s new Head of Payload Services and Thai office. Marcelo Martinez has taken the position of Head of Flight Dynamics, and David Broadbent is the new Director of the Company’s Australian wholly-owned subsidiary.
At the same time, Equatorial Space expands its outreach toward provision of payload products, with in-house manufactured cubesats as well as scientific experiment platform known as MicroLab™ in the pipeline.
Equatorial Space was first founded in 2017 to deliver low-cost, high-reliability launch services to clients worldwide.
With its proprietary solid fuel composition, the HRF-1, Equatorial Space develops hybrid rocket propulsion systems with specifications competitive of that of liquid and solid rockets, without the complexity or explosive risk associated with rocket propulsion.
The Company has previously launched the very first commercially built proof-of-concept rocket carrying its proprietary solid fuel — the Low Altitude Demonstrator, which was also the first commercially built prototype rocket to be launched in Southeast Asia.
Earlier this year, Equatorial Space qualified for a U.S. Space Force and AF Research Lab-backed accelerator program in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Its upcoming qualification mission, the Mid-Altitude Demonstrator.
"Our growing, international crew proves that our value proposition, core technology and overall strategy is increasingly attractive to seasoned industry experts across the globe," said Simon Gwozdz, the Company's founder and CEO, "Our in-house capabilities, originally focused on propulsion development, now includes structural systems and aerodynamic analysis that we can provide not just for our internal development projects, but also to third parties."
Dr. Carlos O. Maidana has been in the industry for 15 years and said,"I met Jamie Anderson several months back and was interested in working together right away. My work in the United States and here in Thailand spans both payload development as well as ground qualification of hardware and I saw the immense potential joining forces when offered to bring the MicroLab platform under the Equatorial wings."
Mr. Marcelo Martinez's career in Argentina spans four decades and a number of sounding rocket and UAV projects both in the country and internationally. He said,"I was interested in hybrid propulsion for some time now, and saw the benefits of the HRF-1 solid fuel immediately. After a year as an advisor, I am delighted to be joining the Singapore team as a full-time, senior engineer."
Mr. David Broadbent has worked globally for many Tier 1 Companies across a wide range of engineering fields for over 50 years, with one of the key highlights of his career to date, taking him overseas to perform structural testing on a newly designed, 9 engine powered, 1.2m diameter carbon-composite rocket's engine frame. He added,"Our Company has an extremely strong Australian connection and heritage — the core technology originates from an Australian engineer and we are beyond proud to be bringing our International capabilities for the benefit of Australia's growing space tech ecosystem."