We welcome you to spend an afternoon of live video chat with Dr. Alan Stern on December 8th at 3:30 p.m. Central!
Leading NASA's $880M New Horizons mission to explore Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, and the Chief Scientist at Moon Express— Dr. Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute is chosen by NASA to fly aboard Virgin Galactic's SpaceShip2 to conduct experiments.
Twice named in the "TIME 100: The Most Influential People in the World", Dr. Alan Stern possesses a deep understanding of multiple fields as a planetary scientist and space program leader, and is one of the true Renaissance Explorers of our era. Since 2001 he has been the lead of the highly successful exploration of Pluto and the Kuiper Belt with NASA's New Horizons mission. Over the years, Stern has been involved in 24 suborbital, orbital, and planetary space missions, including 14 for which he was the mission principal investigator. He developed 8 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. As a space program executive and aerospace consultant to many privatized space vehicle companies, he is a fan of public-private partnerships and building bridges to new markets. Stern believes we are on the verge of a whole new era of space exploration and that the private sector will provide reliable cost effective services to increase the value of private and government space budgets.
A native of New Orleans, Alan Stern's meteoric rise in space science found him as NASA's top-ranking official for science in 2007. In this position Stern directed a US$4.4 billion organization with 93 separate flight missions and a program of over 3,000 research grants. During his tenure a record 10 major new flight projects were started and deep reforms of the research and also the education and public outreach programs were put in place. Characterized as a steadfast individual who chooses science over politics, Dr. Stern made headlines for keeping agency missions on schedule and under budget, and is credited with making "significant changes that have helped restore the importance of science in NASA's mission".
Stern's career has taken him to numerous astronomical observatories, to the South Pole, and to the upper atmosphere aboard various high performance NASA aircraft . He has been involved as a researcher in 29 suborbital, orbital, and planetary space missions; and he has led the development of eight scientific instruments for NASA space missions. In 1995, he was selected as a Space Shuttle Mission Specialist finalist, and in 1996 he was a candidate Space Shuttle Payload Specialist. In 2010, he became a suborbital payload specialist trainee, and is expected to fly several suborbital space missions aboard Virgin Galactic vehicles. There are few opportunities in space exploration that he has not been involved in or considered to lead, including being considered for the position of Administrator for NASA.
Dr. Stern's academic research has focused on studies of our solar system's Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud, comets, the satellites of the outer planets, the Pluto system, and the search for evidence of solar systems around other stars. He has also worked on spacecraft rendezvous theory, terrestrial polar mesospheric clouds, galactic astrophysics, and studies of tenuous satellite atmospheres, including the atmosphere of the moon. As an educator, he has published hundreds of technical papers, written dozens of popular articles, and given hundreds of talks.
For his achievements, Alan Stern has received numerous recognitions and awards including the 2006 Von Braun Aerospace Achievement Award of the National Space Society, the 2007 University of Colorado George Norlin Distinguished Alumnus Award, the 2009 St. Mark's Preparatory School Distinguished Alumnus Award, Smithsonian Magazine's 2015 American Ingenuity Award, the 2016 Sagan Memorial Award of the American Astronautical Society, the 2016 Cosmos Award of The Planetary Society, the 2016 NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, its highest civilian award, the 2017 Distinguished Alumnus Award of the College of Natural Sciences of the University of Texas, the 2018 The National Award of Nuclear Science and History, the Explorer's Club 2018 Lowell Thomas Award, and the 2019 Sir Arthur C. Clarke International Space Achievement award. |
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