{"id":1227,"date":"2025-10-16T12:00:04","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T12:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.agencywebdesigners.com\/?p=1227"},"modified":"2025-10-16T14:22:58","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T14:22:58","slug":"aerospace-startup-rendezvous-robotics-opens-headquarters-in-golden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.agencywebdesigners.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/16\/aerospace-startup-rendezvous-robotics-opens-headquarters-in-golden\/","title":{"rendered":"Aerospace startup Rendezvous Robotics opens headquarters in Golden"},"content":{"rendered":"

An aerospace startup that aims to provide a method to build living and industrial structures in space, communications systems and solar arrays to beam energy to Earth has opened its headquarters in Golden.<\/p>\n

Rendezvous Robotics<\/a> formally started in November 2024 after about eight years of developing and testing technology that uses programmed tiles that autonomously assemble themselves to form modular structures and reconfigure when needed. Strong magnets help the tiles click in place.<\/p>\n

The tiles can be stacked in a rocket and released at their destination to start forming a structure. During a TED talk in April, Ariel Ekblaw,<\/a> inventor of the patented technology and co-founder of Rendezvous Robotics, said her team jokes the process is like \u201ca glorified\u201d PEZ candy dispenser.<\/p>\n

The magnets bring the modular tiles together to \u201cdock, to rendezvous,\u201d Ekblaw said. \u201cThink about space Legos with magnets that click, click, click into place.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company opened for business a few weeks ago in Golden. Rendezvous recently secured $3 million in pre-seed funding to commercialize the technology invented while Ekblaw was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.<\/p>\n

The funding was led by Aurelia Foundry and 8090 Industries, with participation from ATX Venture Partners, Mana Ventures and a group of other investors. Most of the company\u2019s 10 staffers, including Joe Landon, are in the Denver area.<\/p>\n

Landon, Rendezvous co-founder and president, has worked for other aerospace companies, including Lockheed Martin in Jefferson County. He first met Ekblaw through his work at Lockheed. He, Ekblaw and Phil Frank, co-founder and CEO of Rendezvous, settled on the Denver area as the company\u2019s home.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t just convenient that Joe was there and that there is a great talent pool in the Denver metro area in aerospace and defense, but a lot of people wanted to move there,\u201d said Frank, an experienced technology executive and self-described serial entrepreneur who lives outside of Boston.<\/p>\n

Members of the Rendezvous team previously worked for NASA and such companies as SpaceX, Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin and Nokia. The company is looking at serving clients in both the commercial and defense sectors and was keeping an eye on whether President Donald Trump would move U.S. Space Command out of Colorado.<\/p>\n

Last month, Trump announced that\u00a0Space Command<\/a> would be moved to Alabama, reversing the Biden administration\u2019s decision to keep the headquarters in Colorado Springs. The decision didn\u2019t deter Rendezvous from locating in Colorado. Landon said there\u2019s so much space and defense activity and military facilities stretching along the Front Range, from Boulder to Colorado Springs.<\/p>\n

\u201cQuite a few of the folks that we will need to talk to are still going to be here,\u201d Landon said.<\/p>\n

The staff could grow by as many as 50 people within a year, Landon added. And in the next year, Rendezvous expects to demonstrate its technology on the International Space Station. The technology called TESSERAE \u2014 Tessellated Electromagnetic Space Structures for the Exploration of Reconfigurable, Adaptive Environments \u2014 has previously been tested on the space station as well as in low Earth orbit and on flights simulating weightlessness.<\/p>\n

The goal is to more easily build infrastructure in space. A significant obstacle now is being able to get the building blocks where they\u2019re needed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re looking at is an alternative to the way we build spacecraft systems today, which is we have to build them on the ground,\u201d Landon said. \u201cAnd we have to design them to be folded up and then unfolded once they get into space because they have to fit into a rocket.\u201d<\/p>\n

The International Space Station and James Webb Space Telescope took numerous trips to space to construct, Frank said. Astronauts building the space station were put in harm\u2019s way, he added.<\/p>\n