space-tugs
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Epic Aerospace
Epic Aerospace builds Orbit Transfer Vehicles - small chemical space tugs that pick up satellites from crowded rideshare drop-offs and ferry them to their actual working orbits, from LEO to GEO and beyond. Founded in 2018 by Ignacio Belieres Montero, the company runs its engineering and manufacturing out of Argentina with a U.S. headquarters, and put its first GEO-class vehicle, CHIMERA GEO 1, into space aboard SpaceX in early 2025.
Ignacio Montero
Ignacio Belieres Montero is the founder and CEO of Epic Aerospace, a Los Altos, California-based company building orbit transfer vehicles and space tugs that move satellites from one orbit to another. A Stanford aerospace engineering graduate and Y Combinator S19 alum, he started building rockets at 16 and founded Epic Aerospace in 2017. The company's CHIMERA LEO 1 launched aboard SpaceX Transporter 6 in January 2023, and CHIMERA GEO 1 launched on SpaceX's Intuitive Machines-2 mission in February 2025, reaching 53 million kilometers from Earth. Epic Aerospace reached $4.2M in annual revenue in 2024 with a 28-person team, pioneering non-toxic hypergolic propulsion technology for cost-effective in-space transportation.