Boulder, Colorado – February 18, 2010 – Masten Space Systems announced that it is offering the winner of the Next-generation Suborbital Research Conference 2010 Student Suborbital Experiment Competition a free zero gravity flight. The winning proposal was New Mexico State University’s “Experimental Validation of a Robotics-Based Inertial Property Identification Algorithm for Orbiting Spacecraft.”

The flight will take place on one of the company’s new high altitude vehicles slated for flights later this year. These flights can give payloads several minutes of zero gravity critical to developing the new technologies that will lower the cost of exploring space. “It’s partnerships between motivated and creative students like these and low cost launch providers like us that will make the future of space flight look nothing like what has come before. Our goal is to open up suborbital flights like this to any university or high school team in the world at a price that is well within their budget,” said David Masten, CEO.

The second and third place winners were the University of Colorado at Boulder’s “Suborbital Flight Testing of a Deployable Reflector” and Colorado State University’s “Fiber-Optic Mass Gauging System for Measuring Liquid Levels in a Reduced Gravity Environment”. The competition was part of the first annual Next-generation Suborbital Research Conference held in Boulder, Colorado this week. The conference’s goal is to bring researchers from government, industry, and academia together with new suborbital launch providers and help the two communities discover their requirements and capabilities.

About Masten Space Systems
Masten Space Systems is a Mojave, CA based aerospace company developing fully reusable vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) launch vehicles, rocket-related products, and engineering services. The company’s 6000 square foot production facility and 200,000 square foot testing facility is located on the Mojave Air and Space Port. The company designs and builds aerospace solutions that focus on durability, long operational lifetimes, and minimal per-flight maintenance. For more information on the company see http://masten-space.com

Santa Clara, CA, August 16, 2004 – A new entrant in the rapidly expanding space industry emerged today as Masten Space Systems broke its silence by unveiling its new website, www.masten-space.com, and vehicle development plans. The site contains details on the XA-1 suborbital launch vehicle the company will be developing over the next few years.

The XA-1 is a VTOL, Vertical Takeoff and Landing, spacecraft. This means that the vehicle will take off vertically, like most rockets, but will also land on its tail they way rockets landed in in old science fiction movies and the way the Apollo spacecraft landed on the moon. VTOL craft tend to be more flexible and scalable than relying on wings or other aerodynamic lifting structures

The XA-1 is strictly a suborbital rocket, meaning that it will reach an altitude of 100km but without the velocity needed to achieve orbit. While it doesn’t achieve orbit, XA-1 will be able to provide significant cost savings for science and engineering tasks that require space-like conditions for short periods of time, such as microgravity research, upper atmospheric research, and aerospace hardware flight testing.

“This is the beginning of a lot of fun, but hard work. Work anyone can follow along with by visiting our blog where we will be posting regular updates of our progress, ” declared Dave Masten, CEO of Masten Space Systems. A blog is a sort of running daily diary of events that will show not only the current status of development, but where the project has been and how it has changed over time.

Masten Space System’s web site can be found at http://masten-space.com/. The for further questions please contact the company at info@masten-space.com.