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Mars — the red planet— is coming within humanity's grasp.

According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, at no point in history have humans been closer to reaching the once mythical planet.

NASA officials have publicly stated they believe humans will land on Mars at some point in the late 2030s. Before that can happen, NASA will complete its Artemis campaign — a series of missions that will culminate with humanity's first long-term presence on the moon. Gateway, humanity's first lunar space station, will serve as a staging ground to test technologies as NASA prepares for human missions to Mars.

The Artemis campaign is NASA's most ambitious since the Apollo missions — in which humans first stepped on the moon — and will require a collaborative effort from highly talented researchers, scientists and commercial aerospace companies across the country. Factoring squarely into NASA's plans is , a Brookings-based company bred from South à£à£Ö±²¥Ðã State University's research enterprise.

Last August, AeroFly was awarded a NASA Small Business Innovation Research contract that has jumped-started the company's evolution and has greatly expanded its potential. Initially focused on drones, AeroFly is now working to equip NASA with the infrastructure technology needed to complete its Artemis missions.

"We are very gratified to be selected from a field of 1,500 applicants to receive this support from NASA," said Gordon Niva, AeroFly's CEO. "This funding enables us to push the boundaries of space technology, contributing to the future of off-Earth resource utilization and space exploration."

Early beginnings 

AeroFly was incorporated as a South à£à£Ö±²¥Ðã limited liability company in May 2021, but the company's story really begins in December 2019 after (then) SDSU assistant professor Marco Ciarcia and SDSU associate professor Todd Letcher received a research grant from NASA to develop drones capable of carrying humans in something resembling an "air taxi." The initial $148,000 project was designed to give students the freedom to design innovative aeronautics technologies and products.

The work, however, sparked an interest in drones for Letcher and Ciarcia. Early on, they realized that heavy drones had applications in agriculture and could be used to spray herbicide, broadcast fertilizers/seeds and analyze crop fields.

The duo also realized that drones were an emerging industry with high growth potential. In 2021, Goldman Sachs forecasted the total drone market size could be worth upward of $100 billion in the not-so-distant future. With the prototype drones Letcher and Ciarcia had developed, they figured there was an opportunity to capture some of that market in the agriculture sector.

For those paying attention, the potential of their work was clear. This is when Niva, a 1973 SDSU graduate and a member of SDSU's Entrepreneurial Advisory Board, came into the picture. After being introduced to Letcher and Ciarcia through leadership in SDSU's Jerome J. Lohr College of Engineering, Niva, with his 40 years of experience in the aerospace industry, was invited on as AeroFly's CEO.

"I saw a lot of potential," Niva said. "A lot of what's going on in that (drone) rotorcraft market is about lifting humans and air taxis, but there's a niche below that where there is a need to deliver items that weigh 10, 20 or 30 pounds, and it needs to go a fairly long way. The only drones available in that space are manufactured in China. It seems like there is a potential there to have a domestic supplier of that class of drone."

Initially, the company looked to target grants and research funds to further design and test mid-sized, autonomous drones. After receiving key feedback from a failed U.S. Department of Defense proposal, the startup received a $25,000 proof-of-concept grant from the Governor's Office of Economic Development. The funds allowed them to move into an office and assembly room at the Research Park at South à£à£Ö±²¥Ðã State University.

"For me, that moment marked the ideal opportunity to pursue my lifelong aspiration of becoming an aircraft designer," Ciarcia said. "Witnessing a drone evolve from a few simple napkin sketches to a fully functional, pilotable aircraft is an incredibly rewarding experience."

It also allowed them to hire an intern who helped them design and test a utility rotorcraft with a crop-spraying payload.

"That's what AeroFly was for the first three years," Letcher said. "We were building large drones and thinking about what kind of missions drones like this could do, mostly in the ag sector."

NASA contest success

Between 2022 and 2023, AeroFly remained focused on designing and developing specialty payloads for rotorcraft drones. The team produced its first aircraft, Alpha, that was designed to deliver payloads of 20-plus pounds and could fly up to 28 miles.

But in 2022 things began to change ever so slightly. Letcher, who teaches engineering design methods and mechanical systems design, became more interested in "off-Earth" robotics and began entering student teams into NASA design contests as part of SDSU undergraduate- and graduate-level research projects.

The contests produced head-turning results that would eventually cause a pivot in AeroFly's focus.

In one, the team was required to design, build and test an autonomously operating excavator that could grind away at soft concrete and then load it into an autonomously operating dump truck, which took the materials to a drop site one-third of a mile away to be weighed.

In another, the SDSU team designed and built a lunar transport vehicle and forklift. 
Both of the contests — NASA's Break the Ice Lunar Challenge and the Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts Academic Linkage (RASC-AL) competition — saw the SDSU teams make the finals amongst prestigious universities, like Princeton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and private companies. In the RASC-AL competition, the SDSU team — the "Artemis Navigating Transporter System" team — won the Lunar Transport Vehicle category and was honored for its forklift design, which was named the best prototype regardless of category.

The success at the NASA competitions was a pivotal moment, both for the students and for AeroFly. Letcher and Niva both saw potential applications from the work the students did on the projects. They also saw firsthand the engineering talent assembled on the design teams.

Collectively, AeroFly decided to pivot. While the company would still work to design drones and payloads for the ag sector, it would now also work on autonomous extraterrestrial vehicles — an extension of the work from the NASA projects.

AeroFly team grows

It was early summer 2023 in Cocoa Beach, Florida, and Liam Murray was ready to begin his engineering career. He had just received his bachelor's degree from SDSU a few weeks prior, but the success — and enjoyment — of the NASA competitions left him wanting more. 
Letcher approached Murray with a unique opportunity. Rather than starting his professional career, Murray would return to pursue a master's degree. Returning to Brookings not only provided him another year to compete as a student-athlete on the swim team, but it also allowed him to pursue his growing interest in aerospace technology.

Murray, along with Carter Waggoner, Allea Klauenberg, Dylan Stephens and others, were recruited to join the AeroFly team as part a collaborative research partnership with SDSU. All would be able to pursue graduate degrees while also working on aerospace projects.

For all the students, the opportunity AeroFly presented was ideal. 

"What better opportunity?" Waggoner said. "There are not many aerospace companies in the Midwest. They are all coastal. The idea of being able to stay in Brookings is just really cool and then to also be able to do the aerospace stuff that I'm interested in."

The first step for the expanded team was to develop a proposal for a NASA contract. The team's experiences in the NASA competitions helped significantly in the development, which proposed an innovative technology used to collect and convey materials on the moon. 

"My journey with lunar infrastructure started with NASA’s Break the Ice Lunar Challenge, where I spent three years developing excavation and material transport systems for the Moon," Klauenberg said. "That experience shaped my approach to off-Earth resource utilization and directly influenced our work at AeroFly."

During the summer, Niva received notice AeroFly had been awarded the NASA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract. The funding, which ran for six months, allowed for the new team members to be officially classified as employees of AeroFly.

Work began in August, and the team was able to successfully develop a modular auger system specifically designed to handle excavated lunar regolith on the unique environment of the moon.

“This work paves the way for a more sustainable human presence on the moon," Niva said. "Our innovative, and frankly counter-intuitive, modular conveying system represents a significant step forward in creating efficient, adaptable infrastructure for processing materials on the moon and other extraterrestrial bodies."

NASA's preparations and AeroFly's next step

NASA has completed its first two Artemis missions and is readying for 2026, in which humans will return to the lunar surface for the first time in over 50 years. Astronauts are set to explore the region near the lunar South Pole.

AeroFly competed its NASA contract in February. NASA assigned AeroFly’s system a Technology Readiness Level 4, which is a significant step as this means the company’s technology has passed the critical validation in a laboratory environment. A Level 5 designation will require more rigorous testing in "environments that are as close to realistic as possible." The next step for AeroFly will be getting its technology to function in a moon-like environment by use of vacuum chambers.

For that next step, AeroFly has prepared a NASA SBIR Phase II proposal. If the proposal is successful, AeroFly would be awarded nearly a million dollars to continue developing its aerospace technology and bring humans one step closer to Mars.

Editor's note: In May, AeroFly received notice they were awarded a NASA Phase II SBIR grant.