AeroFly's mission is to bring the vast capabilities of heavy-lifting electric UAS at the service of our customers. Our line of aircraft will serve a variety of needs, from crop spraying or package delivery to human transportation.

We are taking on the Moon!

AeroFly has been awarded a NASA SBIR contract

AeroFly is performing a feasibility study on an advanced modular conveyor system of lunar regolith which addresses the difficulties of handling abrasive lunar dust. This modular system is engineered to autonomously adjust, allowing it to efficiently support a range of missions and operations across different lunar landscapes, such as in-situ sampling and composition analysis. Although its primary focus is on lunar applications, this technology also has significant potential for terrestrial industries like manufacturing, agriculture, and mining, where effective and versatile material handling is essential.

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The Team

Gordon Niva, PhD

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and
Chief System Engineer (CSE).

Dr. Niva was an executive from The Boeing Company in 2011 where he was active in advanced technology Research and Development (R&D) and Business Development. He was central to the startup and management of business areas with billions in cumulative revenue. His career in aerospace included nearly two decades of ICBM system engineering.

Gordon is also the CEO/Chief Technical Officer (CTO) of mySmartHome, an Internet-of-Things (IoT) company that specializes in innovative sensor technology and develops custom smarthomes in SD. He and his wife, Susan, founded mySmartHome in 2012. It was profitable in its third year of operation.

Dr. Niva is an independent aerospace and system engineering consultant, serves on the South Dakota State University (SDSU) Entrepreneurial Advisory Board (EAB) and is a mentor to young entrepreneurs at Research Park. He and Susan live in South Dakota and Southern California.

Gordon received undergraduate degrees in Engineering Physics and Chemistry at SDSU. He received his MS in Physics and Ph.D. in Astrophysics from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In 2013 he was named an SDSU Distinguished Engineer-the highest honor bestowed within the department of engineering at SDSU.

Gordon spent 30 years as a Reserve component Army officer retiring as a Colonel (O6). Since 1994 he has been an internationally recognized expert and lecturer on systems engineering and project management. He is a consistent runner and trekker. He and Susan have run 35 consecutive Los Angeles Marathons as a married couple. Gordon and Susan have reached the summit of Kilimanjaro and trekked the rugged terrain of Patagonia.

Marco Ciarcià, PhD

Founder and Chief Technical Officer (CTO).


Dr. Ciarcià is also an Associate Professor at the Mechanical Engineering Department of Colorado State University, Fort Collins. His deep passion for aeronautics led him to obtain the M.S. degree (summa cum laude) in Aerospace Engineering from the Università degli Studi di Palermo in 2001. He then continued his studies by completing, in 2008, the Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering at Rice University, Houston, Texas. From 2010 to 2015, he was awarded of the U.S. National Research Council Research Fellowship. In that period, his research activities were carried out at the Spacecraft Robotics Laboratory of the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA. The main research project, sponsored by the Air Force Research Laboratory, involved the design, development, and testing of a suboptimal guidance strategy for spacecraft proximity maneuvers.

Among other courses,  Marco has been instructor of the  Aircraft Design senior level course at Università degli Studi di Palermo in 2009. As Assistant Professor at SDSU in the Mechanical Engineering Department, he teaches Automatic Controls (senior course), Robotics Systems, and Mechatronics. The latter two are both undergraduate/graduate technical elective courses. He has been advising several Mechanical/Electrical Engineering Capstone Projects related to electric multirotors for different purposes (inspection, precision agriculture, robotics, etc.).

His research interests include UAS, robotics, mechatronics, optimal and nonlinear control, spacecraft guidance, navigation and control, small satellites. These research projects span from theoretical approaches to development of testbeds for hardware in-the-loop validation. Since 2020 he has been part of the AIAA Guidance navigation and Control Technical Committee. In the last three years, Dr. Ciarcià has won, as Principal Investigator, two grants funded by NASA and the South Dakota Space Grant Consortium for a total of $149,688. The aim of these projects is to design, develop, manufacture, and test electric multirotors for human transportation.

Todd Letcher, PhD

Founder and Chief Designer (CD).


Dr. Letcher is also an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at South Dakota State University. Dr. Letcher received his BS in Mechanical Engineering from South Dakota State University in 2005, his MS in Mechanical Engineering from The Ohio State University in 2008, and his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from The Ohio State University in 2012. Immediately after, Dr. Letcher started working in the Mechanical Engineering Department at SDSU, first as a Post-Doctoral Researcher/Instructor (2012), then as a Lecturer (2013), and then as an Assistant Professor (2014).

At SDSU, Dr. Letcher’s research focuses on additive manufacturing, experimental mechanics, and design thinking for multidisciplinary teams. Dr. Letcher’s courses at SDSU merge his research expertise together and help students design solutions to complex problems using a wide variety of technologies and techniques. His current courses are Engineering Design Methods (sophomore design course) and Mechanical Systems Design (capstone design course). Through these courses, he is able to see approximately 40-50 projects through from conceptual design to functioning prototype, each year.

Dr. Letcher also became an Associate Director of the South Dakota Space Grant Consortium in 2018. Since then, he has put a stronger emphasis on developing aerospace-related projects, including the 3D Printed Habitat Challenge, the Student Research Competition, the Break the Ice Lunar Challenge, the Moon to Mars Ice and Prospecting Challenge, and the Deep Space Food Challenge. These teams have won a combined $115,000 is prize money, so far, with several projects yet to be completed/judged.