Ellington Airport / Spaceport

Spaceport/Military Base/Airfield

Ellington Airport is a designated spaceport, host to both civilian and military aviation operations, and home to troops from all five of the U.S. Armed Forces: Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, and Coast Guard. Ellington Field Joint Reserve Base is the home base of the Texas Air National Guard 147^th Aircraft. According to the State Comptroller, total employment for Ellington Field is 2,323. Output is $470K; GDP is $286K; and disposable personal income is $143K.

Ellington, as an international airport, military airfield, and designated, licensed commercial spaceport has attracted a number of innovative, entrepreneurial aerospace companies. Axiom Space, renowned as the world's first commercial space station builder, will facilitate rides into space for private astronauts and professional astronauts from other countries, seek new opportunities to provide access to the ISS to nontraditional users, and produce the Axiom Space Station. Axiom Space’s new 14-acre Ellington campus will be completed by 2023 and accommodate 1,000 jobs. Axiom Space, led by Michael Suffredini, has been a NASA contractor selected to develop a commercial module that will attach to the ISS in 2024. Axiom, too, will develop other modules to provide areas for housing, research, and manufacturing in space.

Intuitive Machines, headquartered at Ellington and founded by Steve Altemus, President and CEO, designs, analyzes, integrates, tests, and flies aerospace systems for lunar landers, satellites, and human space flight. The company has worked on ground support equipment, space suits, ISS payload systems, lunar lander designs, universal return vehicle, and commercial space station designs.

Venus Aerospace is designing a spaceplane that will travel 12 times faster than the speed of sound and at an altitude of 150,000 feet—which means a flight from Los Angeles to Tokyo in one hour. Venus Aerospace Co-Founders Sarah and Andrew Duggleby currently lease an office at Ellington Airport and are working with Spaceport at Ellington to build their headquarters/testing facility.

Collins Aerospace, a division of Raytheon Technologies and Hamilton Sundstrand, is constructing a 116,000 square foot facility amid eight acres at Spaceport for aerospace manufacturing and acceleration. Collins Aerospace will add 250 engineering and technician jobs to the region, as this growing company seeks to innovate and accelerate the growing business of space with its manufacturing laboratory and ability to connect with the area’s entrepreneurial, corporate, and academic communities in tackling aerospace-related challenges and advancing opportunities.