Alan Stern - Astronaut 020

Dr. Alan Stern is best known as the principal investigator of the NASA New Horizons mission to explore Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, the farthest space exploration of worlds to date, but his career spans almost the entire solar system. He is a vice president at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and a planetary scientist with experience leading or playing key support roles in 30 suborbital, orbital and planetary space missions.

Twice named to the Time 100 list of most influential people (2007 and 2016), Alan now adds “astronaut” to his resume, flying as one of the first private suborbital researchers. While aboard VSS Unity, he conducted a space physiology experiment and trained for a future NASA suborbital experiment to observe stars and other objects in space.

Alan previously served as NASA Associate Administrator, leading all its space and Earth science programs in 2007 and 2008 and directing a $4.4 billion organization with 93 flight missions and a program of more than 3,000 research grants. A former board chair of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, and a former board member of both the Challenger Center, and KinetX Corp., he currently serves on the board of Voyager Space Holdings. He is also a member of the U.S. National Science Board, has published over 500 peer-reviewed scientific papers, and is an experienced general aviation pilot who has conducted numerous research missions with F-18s and other high-performance U.S. Air Force, NASA and commercial aircraft.

Alan’s personal interests include running, hiking, camping and writing. He has two daughters and a son. His spacesuit displays the USA flag and the SwRI logo.