Scout Space founder has out-of-this-world goals

Eric Ingram wanted two things as a kid: blue hair and to travel to space.

As CEO of Alexandria-based aerospace startup Scout Space, Ingram found the freedom to establish his now-trademark electric-blue hair. And it might provide the boost to reach that other goal.

Ingram co-founded Scout Space in 2019 while he was furloughed from his job as an aerospace engineer for the Federal Aviation Administration during the federal government’s shutdown in late 2018 and early 2019.

Scout Space manufactures and develops sensor-based systems to enable satellites to safely navigate space while collecting data about what’s going on in orbit. As the race to dominate space continues, orbital space is becoming crowded. Safe and sustainable navigation is becoming increasingly important. Without controls in place, space could be a minefield.

“If you get a fender bender on the highway, you do not ruin the highway for the next 25 years,” says Ingram, a 2013 graduate of Old Dominion University. “If you get into a fender bender in space going 17,000 miles an hour, that debris cloud could potentially disrupt that entire orbital slot for 25 years.”

Scout Space landed early success in 2021 when it piggy-backed onto a demonstration mission with Colorado-based startup Orbit Fab, which is developing space-based fueling stations, on the SpaceX Falcon 9. Orbit Fab needed a system that could help it practice for “rendezvous and docking guidance algorithms,” says founder and CEO Daniel Faber. The company didn’t have money for cameras, so Faber reached out to Ingram and Scout Space co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Officer Sergio Gallucci, both of whom he met when they interned for a previous company Faber ran.

That set off a frantic race to build a payload in six months, and the result allowed Scout Space to prove itself. In June, Scout Space, which has reached about $9 million in total revenue to date, closed a seed round for an undisclosed amount, with Reston-based federal contractor Noblis as majority investor. Scout Space is using the funding to establish an office and lab in Reston and plans to double its technical team to about 20 employees by the end of 2024.

Scout Space has three missions planned in the next nine months and a large product announcement set within the year, Ingram says.

“Everything I’m doing,” he says, “is [with] the end goal of me hopefully going to space at some point.”