17(a) of the Securities Act and Section 10(b) of the Exchange Act and Rule 10b-5 thereunder. The company's first big project was to be the Near Earth Asteroid Prospector, or NEAP, a small innovative commercial spacecraft mission that would have rendezvoused with and landed on a Near Earth Asteroid (NEO), conducted scientific experiments, and claimed the asteroid as private property. As it turned out however, the company's first success would come a little closer to home, in the form of CHIPSat , the Cosmic Hot Interstellar Plasma Spectrometer microsatellite. SpaceDev built and conducted early orbit operations of the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) microsat, the first to use only the Internet for its communications, for University of California at Berkeley under NASA's University Explorer Program (UNEX). This was followed one year later by supplying the rocket motors that propelled SpaceShipOne into the history books by creating the world's first civilian astronauts and helping Paul Allen win the $10 million Ansari X Prize. On October 26, 2005, SpaceDev announced that the Starsys Research Corporation of Boulder, Colorado, would merge with SpaceDev, which would provide SpaceDev with additional expertise and experience with microsatellite technologies. The acquisition of Starsys on January 31, 2006, put the number of SpaceDev employees over 200, located in three states. The Starsys division is being groomed to become a center of space robotics for SpaceDev. Over 18 years Starsys developed and delivered 2,000 space mechanisms that have flown on over 200 missions, all successfully. SpaceDev has most or all of the moving parts on Mars at this time, had mechanisms on Deep Impact, is supplying the separation system and docking mechanism for the soon to be launched Orbital Express, and has mechanisms on the way to Pluto. On September 28, 2006, SpaceDev announced that founder and CEO Jim Benson was stepping down to start a new space tourism venture, The Benson Space Company (BSC). BSC was expected to be one of SpaceDev's largest customers, purchasing multiple Dream Chaser spaceships for use in personal spaceflight. However BSC was dissolved following the death of Jim Benson on October 10, 2008, due to a brain tumor. Dream Chaser On November 16, 2005, SpaceDev announced its Dream Chaser concept for a four-passenger sub-orbital and a six-passenger orbital vehicle, both based on NASA's HL-20 "Personnel Launch System" or "Space Taxi". SpaceDev's suborbital Dream Chaser will use internal hybrid rocket motors similar to those SpaceDev