Ecliptic Management Profiles
Dr. Alan Stern
Strategic Advisor
Alan is currently active as a consultant for private sector space efforts, with clients (in addition to Ecliptic) such as Blue Origin, Odyssey Moon Ltd. and others. He is the principal investigator of the New Horizons mission to Pluto, and has over 25 years of space-science experience, including 200 technical papers, 40 popular articles, books, and technical/scientific editing.
He has been involved as a researcher in 24 suborbital, orbital, and planetary space missions, including eight for which he was the mission principal investigator. He has also led the development of eight scientific instruments for planetary and near-space research missions and has been a guest observer on numerous NASA satellite observatories, including the International Ultraviolet Explorer, the Hubble Space Telescope, the International Infrared Observer and the Extreme Ultraviolet Observer and has given over 100 hundred technical talks and dozens of popular lectures and speeches about astronomy and the space program.
Dr. Stern was Executive Director of the Southwest Research Institute's Space Science and Engineering Division until becoming Associate Administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in 2007. He resigned from that position after nearly a year, and now serves once again at SwRI as Associate VP of R&D for the Space Science and Engineering Division.
- Ph. D. in Astrophysics and Planetary Science at University of Colorado (Boulder)
- M. S. in Aerospace Engineering and Planetary Atmospheres at University of Texas (Austin)
- B. S. in Physics and Astronomy at University of Texas (Austin)
