Dr. Alan Stern is best known as the principal investigator of the New Horizons mission to explore Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. He is a vice president at SwRI and a planetary scientist with experience leading or playing key support roles in 30 suborbital, orbital and planetary space missions. He previously served as NASA Associate Administrator, leading all its space and Earth science programs. A long- time advocate for commercial suborbital research platforms, he has published over 500 peer-reviewed scientific papers and, as an experienced general aviation pilot, conducted research missions with F-18s and other high-performance U.S. Air Force, NASA and commercial aircraft. Caption courtesy of Virgin Galactic.