The NextGen programming focuses on students, educators, and everyone interested in inspiring today’s students to aspire to bring to fruition the vision of everyday people living, working, and thriving in communities beyond Earth.
NextGen
Presentation Speakers
Planetary Scientist, Co-founder and Chairman, Mars Institute
Dr. Pascal Lee is a planetary scientist with the SETI Institute, the Mars Institute, and NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. He is also professor of planetary sciences at Kepler Space University, and chief scientist for Ceres Robotics, a NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) industry provider. He also serves as the National Space Society’s Vice-President for Planetary Development.
Dr. Lee holds an M.E. in geology from the University of Paris-Sorbonne, and a MS and PhD in astronomy and space sciences from Cornell University where he was Carl Sagan’s last T.A. His research focuses on the Moon and Mars and planning the future human exploration of these worlds. He recently co-discovered the Noctis volcano, an ancient giant volcano near Mars’ equator.
Dr. Lee has led over 30 expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctica to study Mars by comparison with the Earth. He wintered over for 402 days at Dumont d’Urville Station in Antarctica and led the Northwest Passage Drive Expedition – a record-setting vehicular traverse across the Arctic along the fabled Northwest Passage. The epic journey is now the subject of the award-winning motion picture documentary film, Passage to Mars. Dr. Lee was also scientist-pilot of the first field test of NASA’s Lunar Electric Rover, a concept pressurized rover for the future human exploration of the Moon.
Dr. Lee is currently a member of the US National Academies’ steering committee on “A Science Strategy for the Human Exploration of Mars”. He is a recipient of the United States Antarctica Service Medal, the National Space Society Space Pioneer Award for Science and Engineering, the Space Frontier Foundation’s Vision to Reality Award, and the Sagan Prize for the Popularization of Science.
In his free time, Pascal likes to be walked by his dog Apollo, fly, and paint. He is an FAA-certified helicopter commercial pilot and flight instructor. His oil paintings on Mars exploration and spacetime travel are in collections worldwide.
Former NASA Astronaut
Commander Susan Kilrain is a renowned astronaut, a distinguished navy test pilot, and author. She is the youngest person, and one of only three women, to pilot the space shuttle. She served 20 years in the navy, paving the way for women. She has flown more than 3,000 flight hours in over 30 different aircraft, and she was awarded the Defense Superior Service Medal. Susan flew as pilot of STS-83 and STS-94, spending more than 20 days in space. Her first mission was cut short due to a potentially life-threatening shuttle system failure. Susan earned her master’s degree in aerospace engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Susan is currently a motivational speaker, venture partner, and consultant, specializing in encouraging young women and underprivileged teens to excel in STEM careers. She has been a board member for private companies, universities, and non-profits. She is currently a Partner at New North Ventures. Susan has recently written a children’s book, An Unlikely Astronaut.
The American institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA)
Nancy C. Wolfson is a Washington, D.C., US-based scholar, lecturer, and researcher. Nancy is a published author with over 18 years of professional managerial experience. President of Disrupting Space, a company dedicated to analog and risk management space-related research and developing international partnership opportunities for various space activities. Nancy focuses on space exploration, sustainability, and planetary defense research and education. Nancy was elected Vice-Chair of the International Astronautical Federation’s (IAF) Planetary Defense (PD) and Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) Technical Committee 2019-2021. Nancy is currently the Vice-Chair of the IAF Risk Management Committee, where she focuses on research for space and defense activities to identify and mitigate potential threats and exploit opportunities to support decision-makers. Nancy founded the first IAF Planetary Defense and Near-Earth Object Symposium (E10), innovating this initiative by uniting the topics of NEO-Space Debris in a Joint Session, receiving the support of 30 members of two IAF committees, the IAF bureau and the larger Planetary Defense-NEO community. Nancy’s current research is in the areas of planetary defense, asteroid missions, multiple applications, and lessons learned from COVID-19. Nancy advocates for increasing space agencies, young professional and citizen scientist-amateurs astronomer’s involvement in planetary defense. Nancy is acting as an Expert-Judge for the Unistellar-SETI “Nickname and Asteroid” Program; she provides formal recommendations to the International Astronomical Union (IAU) regarding newly discovered asteroids such as NEA 1999 AP10. She is a signatory to United Nations Asteroid Declaration-100X for Asteroid Day, to mention some.
Nancy is an active member of the America Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Society and Aerospace Technology; her role within the organization is to increase planetary defense and NEO content, launching Special Sessions online with AIAA-LA and acting as a Session Chair for SciTech and ASCEND. Nancy was recently elected Chair of the IAF Space Entrepreneurship and Investment Committee (IAF-SEIC), where she focuses on space sustainability, space resources utilization, public and private partnerships for manned and unmanned missions, and providing proposals to foster the diversification of the space economy-budgets for various sectors of the space industry, in this topic she is conducting a research on the UN-ITU for space resources utilization in collaboration with representatives from multiple space agencies. Wolfson’s objective is to democratize access to higher learning, making space concepts accessible to all academia, corporations, and the general public.
Former NASA Chief Astronaut
Captain Robert “Hoot” Gibson entered the United States Navy after college and served as a fighter pilot in the F-4 “Phantom” and F-14 “Tomcat” aircraft, flying combat missions in Southeast Asia and making more than 300 carrier landings aboard the aircraft carriers USS Coral Sea and USS Enterprise. After attending the Navy Fighter Weapons School, better known as TOPGUN, and the Navy Test Pilot School, he served as a flight test pilot prior to being selected to become an Astronaut in 1978 in the first Space Shuttle Astronaut selection. In eighteen years as an Astronaut, he flew five space flights, four of them as Mission Commander, aboard the space shuttles Challenger, Columbia, Atlantis, and Endeavour. His final space flight was the first mission to rendezvous and dock with the Russian Space Station Mir in 1995. In his career with NASA, he held the positions of Deputy Chief of NASA Aircraft Operations, Deputy Director of Flight Crew Operations, and Chief Astronaut. In a flying career spanning more than sixty years, he has accumulated more than 14,000 hours of flight time in more than 160 types of military and civilian aircraft. He has received numerous honors, awards, and decorations and has established six Aviation World Records and three Space World Records.
Former NASA & Boeing Astronaut
Chris Ferguson is a retired NASA astronaut and former U.S. Navy captain who has had a distinguished career in space exploration. He flew on three Space Shuttle missions, including STS-115 as a pilot in 2006, and STS-126 as commander in 2008. Ferguson is most famous for commanding STS-135 in 2011, which was the final mission of NASA’s Space Shuttle program.
After retiring from NASA, Ferguson joined Boeing as the director of Crew and Mission Operations for the company’s Commercial Crew Program, working on the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft. Although initially slated to command the first crewed flight of the Starliner, he stepped down in 2020 for personal reasons.
Ferguson has contributed extensively to space exploration and human spaceflight safety, often drawing parallels between historical failures in large systems and potential risks in space missions.
Inspiration4 Astronaut
Dr. Sian Leo Proctor is a visionary poet, artist, explorer, and geoscience professor. In 2021, Dr. Proctor made history as the first artist selected to go to space on the SpaceX Inspiration4 mission. She is the first woman commercial spaceship pilot and the only African-American woman to be a mission pilot. She is an international speaker and science communicator and has authored multiple books including the transformative science book EarthLight. She is currently traveling around the world as the U.S. Department of State Science Envoy for Space.
