Aurora Avionics appoints Orbex founder to Board
Above: (left to right) Oren Smith-Carpenter, ChrisLarmour and Rowland Fraser
Courtesy Aurora Avionics
Oren Smith-Carpenter, Aurora Avionics CEO said: "Chris brings a huge amount of experience and a broad network of connections that will help Aurora be commercially successful, assisting us in getting to the next level. His advice and backing is a significant boost for us as we develop our technology and proposition."
Chris Larmour is widely known within the UK and European space sector and raised around $100 million in venture capital and public funding at Orbex during his tenure as CEO. Orbex now employs more than 200 people.
Aurora is on a mission to revolutionise the electronic control systems, called avionics, that serve as a rocket’s central nervous system. Its co-founders, Oren Smith-Carpenter and Rowland Fraser are both former Orbex employees and experienced aerospace engineers.
The firm recently closed a £320,000 funding round, supported by Scottish Enterprise and the Gabriel group of angel investors, and was recently selected for Scottish Enterprise's High Growth Ventures cluster. Aurora is co-located with the European Space Agency (ESA) at the Higgs Innovation Centre in Edinburgh, and has just moved into a new laboratory and qualification facility.
Chris Larmour said: "I'm delighted to have been asked to join the board at Aurora and to work with Oren, Rowland and their highly experienced chair Richard Cooper. I know the founders very well. They are building a company to provide high reliability avionics for both small launch vehicles and a wide range of other applications that operate in extreme environments."
Aurora will be Larmour’s first advisory role following his departure from Orbex and a signal of the opportunity which Aurora expects to capture within the rapidly growing control subsystems market.
Oren said: “The exponential growth in demand for putting satellites into space is creating a vast market for launch providers, with many hoping to send rockets into space in the coming months and years. Avionics systems qualified for the harsh space environment presents a costly barrier to entry for rocket firms, with high research and design costs.”
