Erik Levine is the founder of Astro Cellular LLC an aerospace consulting firm based in the Silicon Valley where he supports a variety of companies from established prime contractors to new space startups. He has worked in the aerospace industry for over 30 years with experience ranging from battery technology, spacecraft systems engineering, launch vehicle mission management, advanced systems, proposal management, and program management. His recent experience includes roles as an executive leader with the creation of an aerospace startup as well as general management for a large defense firm responsible for research, engineering, manufacturing, and product delivery.
Prior to founding Astro Cellular, Erik was the director of commercial programs at Stellar Solutions, where he led technical and business operations covering due diligences for aeronautical and aerospace customers in addition to business development activities in the commercial aerospace market with applications crossing into government civil, defense and intelligence needs, supporting development of launch vehicles, satellite platforms and subsystem technologies. Before that he was the General Manager for CACI’s Optical and Photonics division (formerly SA Photonics) specializing in the development and commercialization of multi-gigabit space and air based laser communication systems for applications in LEO, MEO, GEO and bGEO. Erik was the vice president of programs at SpaceLink, a startup aerospace company pursing the development of a MEO space-based optical and RF communications relay system. As part of this role Erik was responsible for the procurement and management of the SpaceLink satellites, including their optical communication systems. Erik took a slight departure from aerospace engineering and worked at Intuitive Surgical as a senior program manager responsible for a family of advanced robotic medical instruments throughout their product life cycle (prototype through high volume manufacturing and commercialization). Prior to this he worked at Maxar (formerly SSL, Space Systems / Loral) in a variety of roles from program, technical, systems engineering management to launch vehicle mission management and power subsystem expertise.
Erik has a BS in Applied Mechanical Engineering from UC San Diego, an MS in Mechanical Engineering from Santa Clara University, and a graduate certificate in Space Systems Engineering from Steven’s Institute of Technology.
In addition to supporting SCU as member of the Mechanical Engineering Industry Advisory Board, Erik is member of the Santa Clara County Sheriff Search and Rescue team.