Former SpaceX manager quits UK startup Skyrora after only six months
Only six months after he took the job as chief operating officer at the British rocket startup Skyrora, former SpaceX manager of its mission and launch operations Lee Rosen has quit the company.
A Skyrora spokesman said Mr Rosen had left for “personal reasons” and planned to return to California.
It is the latest blow to the space venture that is hoping to use a rocket base on the Shetland islands to fire small satellites into space. The company’s first suborbital launch test of its Skylark L rocket from a pad in Iceland failed, with the rocket crashing into the Norwegian ocean about 500 metres from the coast. The company blamed the failure on a “software related anomaly”.
Rosen’s quick exit from the company could suggest something is not quite right there, or it could simply be the job was not right for him. We do not know. The article however also provides this tidbit about this British rocket startup:
Skyrora was founded by Ukranian entrepreneur Volodymyr Levykin, a former executive at now defunct dating empire Cupid PLC. Its investors include Ukrainian internet entrepreneur Max Polyakov, according to a report by Snopes. Mr Polyakov is a shareholder at Hong Kong-based Digitroom Holdings, which owns a stake in Skyrora.
Polyakov was the billionaire who bought Firefly when it was bankrupt, He resurrected it, and then was forced to sell out by the State Department.
Only six months after he took the job as chief operating officer at the British rocket startup Skyrora, former SpaceX manager of its mission and launch operations Lee Rosen has quit the company.
A Skyrora spokesman said Mr Rosen had left for “personal reasons” and planned to return to California.
It is the latest blow to the space venture that is hoping to use a rocket base on the Shetland islands to fire small satellites into space. The company’s first suborbital launch test of its Skylark L rocket from a pad in Iceland failed, with the rocket crashing into the Norwegian ocean about 500 metres from the coast. The company blamed the failure on a “software related anomaly”.
Rosen’s quick exit from the company could suggest something is not quite right there, or it could simply be the job was not right for him. We do not know. The article however also provides this tidbit about this British rocket startup:
Skyrora was founded by Ukranian entrepreneur Volodymyr Levykin, a former executive at now defunct dating empire Cupid PLC. Its investors include Ukrainian internet entrepreneur Max Polyakov, according to a report by Snopes. Mr Polyakov is a shareholder at Hong Kong-based Digitroom Holdings, which owns a stake in Skyrora.
Polyakov was the billionaire who bought Firefly when it was bankrupt, He resurrected it, and then was forced to sell out by the State Department.