{"id":17318,"date":"2023-02-02T19:24:16","date_gmt":"2023-02-02T11:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/tiphaine-louradour-launches-a-new-stage-of-her-career-as-ceo-of-spaceflight-inc\/"},"modified":"2023-02-02T19:24:16","modified_gmt":"2023-02-02T11:24:16","slug":"tiphaine-louradour-launches-a-new-stage-of-her-career-as-ceo-of-spaceflight-inc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/tiphaine-louradour-launches-a-new-stage-of-her-career-as-ceo-of-spaceflight-inc\/","title":{"rendered":"Tiphaine Louradour launches a new stage of her career as CEO of Spaceflight Inc."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Spaceflight CEO Tiphaine Louradour has more than 15 years of space industry experience. (Spaceflight Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Space industry veteran Tiphaine Louradour<\/strong> is taking the helm as CEO of Spaceflight Inc., a launch and in-space transportation services provider based in Bellevue, Wash.<\/p>\n

She succeeds Curt Blake<\/strong>, who has served as Spaceflight CEO and president since 2013. Blake guided the company through a dynamic period in the rise of the satellite rideshare market \u2014 a period that included the company\u2019s acquisition by Japan\u2019s Mitsui & Co. and Yamasa Co. in 2020 and the development of the Sherpa orbital transfer vehicle for satellite deployment in low Earth orbit, or LEO.<\/p>\n

Louradour has 25 years of experience as a business leader, with more than 15 years of that experience in the space industry. She was president of International Launch Services starting in 2020 \u2014 and previously served in a variety of executive roles at United Launch Alliance, including president of global commercial sales.<\/p>\n

In a news release, Louradour said she was excited to join Spaceflight Inc. \u201cMy goal in leading this organization is to build on its groundbreaking achievements and expand the launch and on-orbit service offerings beyond LEO,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m very much looking forward to working with the team, as well as its customers and partners, to continue to evolve Spaceflight and especially its Sherpa OTV program into its next phase of growth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since its founding in 2011, Spaceflight has been a pioneer in making arrangements for small satellites to ride into orbit as secondary payloads on a wide range of launch vehicles. The company has executed 55 missions on behalf of its customers, with 463 spacecraft taken to space. Its most recent mission involved sending up four Kleos Space satellites on last month\u2019s SpaceX Transporter 6 launch.<\/p>\n

The satellite rideshare market is becoming increasingly competitive, but Louradour told GeekWire that Spaceflight\u2019s decade of experience and its range of launch options offer key advantages. \u201cI believe there are business cases today that may not fully exist yet, that we are going to enable because of what we can offer and what we\u2019ve started offering with Sherpa,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Louradour said the key will be to \u201calign what those additional services and opportunities are to truly meet our customers\u2019 needs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of those services are likely to involve the Sherpa-ES, a space tug capable of deploying payloads in lunar orbit or geosynchronous equatorial orbit. \u201cThere\u2019s a market there,\u201d Louradour said. \u201cThere are a lot of activities that are progressing toward supporting cislunar activities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blake will support the transition for the next several weeks. Then he\u2019ll provide consulting for Mitsui & Co.\u2019s space group, and give legal and strategic counsel to other companies in the space industry.<\/p>\n

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Curt Blake had been Spaceflight\u2019s CEO and president since 2013. (GeekWire Photo \/ Alan Boyle)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cOver the last decade, the team at Spaceflight has led the industry in identifying and creating launch services that enabled hundreds of satellites from commercial entities, government agencies and universities to reach orbit,\u201d Blake said in an emailed statement. \u201cIt\u2019s humbling to reflect on how the innovative, groundbreaking work of our team changed how organizations get their spacecraft on orbit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blake said he and his teammates at Spaceflight \u201chelped make rideshare to space a standard practice.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m excited to see how their work, especially on the Sherpa OTV program, will continue to drive the industry forward and enable complex, innovative missions,\u201d Blake said.  <\/p>\n

Kensuke Kubota, Mitsui general manager and chairman of Spaceflight\u2019s board of directors, paid tribute to Blake\u2019s contributions and said he was thrilled to welcome Louradour to the company.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe possesses the passion, industry expertise, strategic leadership skills and collaborative relationship-building prowess to create an even greater, more successful Spaceflight organization going forward,\u201d Kubota said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spaceflight CEO Tiphaine Louradour has more than 15 years of space industry experience. (Spaceflight Photo) Space industry veteran Tiphaine Louradour is taking the helm as CEO of Spaceflight Inc., a launch and in-space transportation services provider based in Bellevue, Wash. She succeeds Curt Blake, who has served as Spaceflight CEO and president since 2013. Blake […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2340,4396],"class_list":["post-17318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-spaceflight","tag-tech-moves"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17318"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17318\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}