TSU to open spaceport facility at Ellington Airport for aerospace training

Texas Southern University is opening a 4,500-square-foot aerospace facility at Ellington Airport, putting classroom instruction inside one of southeast Harris County’s most important aviation corridors. The project is designed to push TSU students toward careers in corporate aviation, aerospace and commercial aviation while giving Houston another tool to build a local talent pipeline around the Houston Spaceport.

The facility is being developed with the City of Houston and the Houston Airport System, building on a five-year memorandum of agreement Houston City Council authorized in May 2023. Houston Airports originally said it would invest up to $5 million for a two-acre site at Ellington, and later council action approved $5.5 million from the Airport Improvement Fund for the TSU Flight Academy. The broader site plan called for a 24,000-square-foot aircraft hangar, an 11,000-square-foot apron, 4,200 square feet of office and training space and an 8,000-gallon above-ground aviation fuel tank, with construction originally scheduled to start in May 2024 and finish in May 2025.

TSU’s Board of Regents approved development of the aerospace engineering program in February 2026, and the university has been expanding the program quickly. TSU reported record enrollment of 180 aviation students for a second straight academic year in 2025, and the university also bought 12 Cirrus SR20 aircraft that year for the program. The new Ellington spaceport facility is meant to give those students a place to learn on-site, recruit, and build direct ties to employers in the sector.

The move also fits a larger regional strategy already taking shape at Ellington. San Jacinto College’s EDGE Center serves as the official education training partner for the Houston Spaceport, and Houston Airport System officials have said the workforce strategy is critical to attracting and keeping aerospace companies. Airport director Mario Diaz has repeatedly framed Ellington as part of Houston’s aeronautical future, and TSU aviation executive director Terence Fontaine has said the Ellington facility would house the program’s aircraft.

For Harris County, the significance is concrete: a public university, a city airport system and local college partners are aligning around a place where students can move from training into aviation and space jobs without leaving Houston. In a region where aerospace employers weigh access to skilled labor, Ellington is becoming a test of whether Houston can turn its Space City identity into a durable business and workforce advantage.