Pioneer Aerospace Nestles into the Musk Family

Pioneer Aerospace has been officially acquired by SpaceX after its parent company's bankruptcy earlier this year.

The change brings the former contractor into the SpaceX family, adding even more in-house know-how on a difficult and demanding area of spaceflight. Pioneer Aerospace has been the cheapest buy for their new owners so far, a scant 2.2 million dollars. That was a steal of sorts, thanks to the Chapter 11 filing from Pioneer's parent company Aviation Safety Resources. The last time SpaceX went company shopping, the register read nearly 525 million dollars for the satellite brand Swarm. Since then, SpaceX has largely stayed out of the acquisition game, finding its plate quite full with the launch services and manufacturing side of the spacefaring game.

Pioneer's expertise has lead them to provide all the drogue chutes for the Dragon lineup, allowing the recovery of the expensive spacecraft. It's notable, however, that Pioneer was only contracted for the smaller drogues, and not the main parachute. Those were produced by Airborne, which remains a different vendor from Pioneer. Pioneer's time with Aviation Safety Resources was short, having been sold off from Euro conglomerate Safran in June 2022.

FMI: www.spacex.com