Alan Stern

Alan Stern is an American planetary scientist and aerospace engineer, best known as the principal investigator of NASA's New Horizons mission, which carried the first spacecraft to Pluto and the Kuiper belt beyond. Born in New Orleans in 1957, he trained in physics, astronomy and aerospace engineering at the University of Texas at Austin and took a doctorate in astrophysics and planetary science at the University of Colorado Boulder. He spent his career largely at the Southwest Research Institute, where he led planetary science groups and later its space studies department, and he served for nearly a year in 2007 and 2008 as Associate Administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate. His sources credit him with involvement in 24 suborbital, orbital and planetary missions, eight of them as principal investigator, and with developing eight scientific instruments, among them an ultraviolet imaging system that flew on two space shuttle missions. He later became Chief Scientist at Moon Express and flew as a private astronaut. Time magazine listed him among its 100 most influential people in 2007.