EMBA Grad Stephanie Murphy Founded Aegis Aerospace to Support Space Research
Stephanie Murphy ’00 ’14 grew up surrounded by space.
Her father, Edelmiro Muñiz ’67 ’69, was an aerospace engineer. After retiring from the Air Force, he started a business providing engineering services to NASA and the Department of Defense. Murphy grew up near the Johnson Space Center and began helping her father with the company as a teenager. After her own Texas A&M University education, she followed in his footsteps, founding her own company, Aegis Aerospace, a space and technology company that has government and commercial clients.
Principal owner and CEO, Murphy formed Aegis in 2021 after founding her first commercial space company, Alpha Space and merging with MEIT — a space and defense tech company.
A bachelor’s graduate of Texas A&M’s Department of Agricultural Economics, Murphy earned her Executive MBA from Mays and says the program taught her advanced skills in everything from accounting and management to talking about complex topics — like space, manufacturing, engineering — in a way that can also translate to those in business with no experience in that field.
“I really feel like I wouldn’t have started on this journey without my experiences at Mays,” Murphy says.
From College Station to the Space Station
Aegis has developed architecture for the International Space Station, building platforms that are attached to the space system in various places on the interior and exterior that enable research and testing of space technologies. These facilitate not only their own research but other entities’, whether it’s government or academia or private industry.
“We’re part of this pathfinding for creating and building space architecture,” Murphy says. “We enable thousands of other research projects to occur.”
Right now, for example, they have five platforms attached and operating to the outside of the ISS. “At any given time we have these platforms that we’ve built and attached and we operate,” she says. “We actually own and operate a piece of the space station.”
Most recently, the company received $10 million from the Texas Space Commission, which will go toward demonstrating the manufacturing of semiconductor material in space.
There’s a Spirit Can Ne’er be Told
Aegis also partnered with Texas A&M for the Texas A&M/Aegis Aerospace Multi-Use Space Platform Integrating Research & Innovative Technology (TAMU-SPIRIT), a first-of-its-kind, low-Earth orbiting platform attached to the International Space Station. It can be used for experiments and collecting samples. They’ve already selected the first slate of Aggie student experiments that will fly on the maiden mission in 2027.
“Because my heart’s in Aggieland, A&M was the first place I pitched it,” Murphy says.
The idea of reciprocity has always been important to her, thanks to sage advice from her father: “It’s important to give, but it’s more important to give first.”
“I think one of our family values is about service,” she says. “My parents definitely raised us to be appreciative of what we have and to always try and give back.”
Beyond that project, Murphy remains involved with Texas A&M through the Aggie Women Network. She’s a former president-elect of its board of directors. One connection forged through this network led her to meet Mays Outstanding Alumnus Jamie Duke ’97, who supported Aggie Women Network’s fundraising efforts by bidding on the chance of a lifetime. Duke’s Aggie Ring was sent to space with Aegis on the MISSE-21 as part of an auction that raised funds for the mission and scholarships.
Murphy also serves on the board of directors for Space Center Houston and is a member of the Johnson Space Center joint leadership team. NASA honored her with the Exceptional Technology Achievement Medal and she was given the Leadership Award in 2019 from Women in Aerospace.
“Being part of developing a new space economy has been an amazing experience as a female entrepreneur,” Murphy says. “Space has no ceilings, and it’s been rewarding to build pathways for inspired youth — especially young women.”
