Dr. Alan Stern has served as a member of our board of directors since October 2019. Dr. Stern has been the Chief Exploration Officer of World View Enterprises since April 2021 and has also served as Chief Scientist there from December 2014. Dr. Stern was also the founder of The Golden Spike Company and has served as the Chief Executive Officer from September 2010 until the company’s closure in 2017. Since April 2008, he has run his own aerospace consulting practice and has over 30 years of experience in space instrument development, with a concentration in ultraviolet technologies.

Dr. Stern formerly served as in Washington, DC as NASA’s chief of all space and Earth science programs, directing a $4.4 billion organization with 93 separate flight missions and a program of over 3,000 research grants. He has led 14 NASA missions/flight experiments including NASA’s $880 million New Horizons mission that successfully explored the Pluto system and is now exploring the Kuiper Belt, the farthest exploration in the history of humankind. He previously served as Associate Vice President and Special Assistant to the President at the Southwest Research Institute since February 2009, the Director of the Florida Space Institute from September 2011 to January 2013, and Chief Scientist and Mission Architect for Moon Express from September 2010 to February 2013. He has served as a board member of KinetX Corp. since May 2021 and served as a board member of the Challenger Center for Space Science Education from 2008 to 2012, an advisory board member of Lowell Observatory from 2018 to the present, as a founder of Uwingu, LLC and on the board of directors of Paragon Space Development Corp. from February 2012 to December 2014 and as Board Chairman of the Commercial Space Federation from September 2016 to September 2018. In 2018, he was named by the Trump Administration to a six-year term on the U.S. National Science Board.

Dr. Stern has a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics, a Bachelor of Art degree in Astronomy, and Masters of Science degrees in aerospace engineering and planetary atmospheres from the University of Texas at Austin, which he received in 1980 and 1981, respectively. He received his doctorate degree in astrophysics and planetary science in 1989 from the University of Colorado. We believe that Dr. Stern is qualified to serve on our board of directors due to his extensive background in space program management.