Esteban Jiménez Sánchez

I got into rocketry in 2015, as a founding member of the University of Costa Rica's Aerospace Engineering Group. A year later I traveled to Black Rock Desert, Nevada, to get certified in high-power rocketry with TRIPOLI.

From there I moved into medical devices: over three years at Boston Scientific designing endoscopy instruments, working the full lifecycle from concept through validation and market release.

In parallel, I kept building rockets on my own time, and in 2022 I joined Orbital Space Technologies. There I led the full mechanical design of MUSA, a microgravity experiment that became Costa Rica's second space mission — and the first carried out entirely by a private company, with no public funding. MUSA launched successfully in November 2022, from the Esrange Space Center in Sweden.

Today I'm cofounder of VEL Space, where we're developing a liquid-propellant rocket engine from the ground up. I'm also President of the Asociación Costarricense de Cohetería (ACC) and Prefect of TRIPOLI Costa Rica: I run rocketry and propulsion courses for universities and schools, organize public motor test days, and serve as Range Safety Officer — the person with the authority to halt any operation at the first sign of risk.

Costa Rica doesn't have much of a rocketry tradition — that's exactly what I want to help change. Teaching courses, mentoring, and sharing what I know is as much a part of this work as designing hardware. This site is an attempt to make that knowledge more accessible: documented projects, tools I've built, and whatever I'm learning along the way.

I'm also open to new opportunities as a propulsion or mechanical design engineer, particularly in aerospace in Europe. If that's you, I'd be glad to talk.