Leadership & Innovation

Andrew ‘Drew’ Aurigema is an aerospace propulsion systems engineer, patent holder, machinist, A&P mechanic, licensed pilot, light-aircraft owner/builder, and rapid-prototyping consultant. His commercial manufacturing experience includes development of a patented underwater vision system used around the world. A lifelong space and astronomy enthusiast, Drew also holds utility patents related to space propulsion and has pursued alternate-propulsion research alongside his aerospace work.

Classically trained in aerospace propulsion systems, Drew brings more than 38 years of experience in the U.S. space program, with hands-on knowledge of flight hardware, ground support equipment (GSE), commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) systems, government-furnished equipment (GFE), and prototype hardware. His experience spans the mechanical, structural, and fluid systems used throughout government and private space programs.

He also brings extensive subject-matter expertise in contamination control, cleanroom operations, precision-cleaning processes, and ground-support infrastructure, together with broad experience in spacecraft materials and processes, spacecraft processing, component and system testing, and prototype creation. At Exodus, that combination of engineering, machining, fabrication, testing, and rapid prototyping supports the development of new propulsion hardware from concept through working test article.

Dr. Charles Buhler is the former lead scientist of the Electrostatics and Surface Physics Laboratory (ESPL) at NASA Kennedy Space Center, a lab which he cofounded in 2000. Dr. Buhler led hundreds of investigations as one of NASA’s subject matter experts for electrostatic discharge (ESD) and worked directly multiply programs such as: Space Shuttle Program, the International Space Station Program, Hubble Space Telescope Program, Constellation Program and the Artemis Program. He served on NASA’s Electromagnetic Environmental Effects (E3) Panel, the agency’s leading board regarding all ESD-, EMI, and EMC-related issues for the agency and helped non-government space programs such as Boeing, Space X and Blue Origin as well as international partners such as ESA and JAXA.

In 2010 Dr. Buhler left NASA to start Poly Adaptive, LLC an Arkansas-based technology startup company based on dust removal technology he helped develop. At that time, he also formed CRB High Field, LLC to work as a consultant for ExxonMobil Research and Engineering company up until 2022. It was during this time away from NASA that the Exodus effect was discovered.

Dr Buhler returned to NASA in May of 2019 to lead the ESPL and support the Artemis Program for the past several years. He was the Principal Investigator for the Electrodynamic Dust Shield payload on board Firefly’s Blue Ghost mission which successfully demonstrated self-cleaning technologies on the lunar surface. Dr Buhler also served as the Principal Investigator for the Lunar Electrostatics and Dust Mitigation (LEDM) astronaut tool which will be used to remove dust and electrostatic charges from suit materials during upcoming lunar mission. In August of 2026 he left NASA a second time to work full time at Exodus Propulsion Technologies, a startup company based on a new physics that he discovered in 2016. Dr. Buhler completed his doctorate in Physics at Florida State University in 2000 and is currently the President of the Electrostatics Society of America.