Brevard Space Entrepreneur Carol Craig Recognized Among Global Female Founders
The Female Space Founders Project included Merritt Island entrepreneur Carol Craig in its growing directory of women building the global space industry.
Carol Craig has spent more than two decades building aerospace companies on the Space Coast. A new international project is making sure her name appears alongside other women who have founded companies across the global space industry.
The Female Space Founders Project recently included Craig in its growing directory of women leading businesses in satellites, launch, robotics, Earth observation, defense, sustainability and other space technologies.
Craig is the founder of Merritt Island-based Craig Technologies and Sidus Space, the Cape Canaveral company developing satellites, data services and space-based infrastructure.
After learning of the recognition, Craig said she was honored to be included with women helping shape the industry's future and thanked project creator Kelly Keodara for making their work more visible.
A directory built to make founders easier to see
Keodara has described the Female Space Founders Project as a living resource rather than a final ranking. The project began with a basic question: how many women have founded space companies?
Research quickly revealed founders working across countries and specialties, but no central place where their names and companies could be viewed together. The resulting directory is intended to grow as additional founders are identified and information is updated.
That distinction matters. Craig was not selected as the winner of a contest or placed in a numbered ranking. She was included in a global visibility project meant to document a group that has often been harder to find in traditional lists of space-industry leaders.
From Navy aviation to Merritt Island manufacturing
Before founding a company, Craig served as a Naval Flight Officer in the U.S. Navy and was among the women entering military aviation roles that had historically been closed to them.
She launched Craig Technologies in 1999. The company grew into an aerospace and defense business supporting engineering, manufacturing, information technology and mission work for government and commercial customers.
Craig later founded Sidus Space and took the company public on Nasdaq in 2021. Sidus builds and operates space hardware while developing its LizzieSat platform and data services for customers that need information collected from orbit.
Photo courtesy of Carol Craig via Space Coast Daily.
Why the recognition matters locally
Brevard is full of major aerospace names, but its industry also depends on founders willing to start companies, win specialized work and build teams near the launch pads.
Craig's inclusion puts a Merritt Island entrepreneur into a broader story about who gets seen as a space founder. It also gives girls and young women interested in engineering, aviation or entrepreneurship a nearby example—not an abstract figure working across the country, but someone who built companies in the same community where rockets launch.
Craig has spoken publicly about the importance of seeing women in roles that once seemed out of reach. Her own career now spans military aviation, private aerospace manufacturing, public-company leadership and service on regional boards.
The Female Space Founders Project is still growing. That makes Craig's recognition less like a lifetime-achievement finish line and more like an entry in a living record of who is building the industry now.
For Brevard, one of those names comes with a Merritt Island address.
Sources and useful links
Claire Szewczyk
Claire has called Florida home for a decade, but her love of the Space Coast goes back further — to the beat-up Kennedy Space Center coffee table book she found in a thrift store when she was five. She writes about the people, places, and history that make Brevard County great, and those stories are where Brightside Brevard began.
