Ad Astra Rocket Company

The Ad Astra Rocket Company, a U.S. Delaware corporation, is a rocket propulsion company dedicated to the development of advanced plasma rocket propulsion technology. Located in Webster, Texas, three miles away from NASA's Johnson Space Center, and in Liberia, Costa Rica, the company was incorporated on January 14, 2005. The President and CEO of Ad Astra Rocket Company is retired astronaut Franklin Chang-Díaz. The company has been working on Chang-Díaz's concept of the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket, known by its acronym VASIMR. The VASIMR is intended to achieve several advantages over current chemical rocket designs, including lunar cargo transport, in-space refueling, and ultra-high speeds for distant space missions.

The Ad Astra Rocket Company Costa Rica (AARC CR) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ad Astra Rocket Company. AARC CR was formed in 2005. The facility is located approximately 10 km west of the city of Liberia, capital of the province of Guanacaste, on the campus of EARTH University. On December 13, 2006, the Costa Rican team of AARC generated its first plasma. After extensive testing of a 200 kW ground-test VASIMR unit, the company is aiming for a three-year flight test mission.

In March 2015, NASA selected Ad Astra for the NextSTEP program. The partnership was still continuing as of July 2021, with Ad Astra aiming to achieve the NASA-set goal of firing VASIMR continuously for 100 hours at 100 kilowatts in the second half of 2021.