Our Supporters

Gregg Maryniak

Gregg Maryniak is the Co-Founder and Secretary of the XPRIZE Foundation and a member of the Board of Directors. He was the Foundation’s original Executive Director through 2005.

He is Co-Chairman of the Energy and Space Tracks at Singularity University.

He previously served as Vice President of the St. Louis Science Center, Director of the McDonnell Planetarium, Senior Scientist of the Futron Corporation and CEO of the Space Studies Institute of Princeton.

He has served on many boards including the International Space University, the SUNSAT Energy Council, the Chicago Society for Space Studies, the Director’s Council of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh Foundation where he is currently Vice Chairman.

An Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics he has lectured throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia on spaceflight and energy. He received Russia’s Tsiolkovsky Medal for his work on space resources and the Space Frontier Foundation’s Vision to Reality award for creating the Lunar Prospector Team which ultimately found water at the moon’s poles.

Peter Rathsman

CTO of OHB Sweden. Peter joined SSC in 1983 later OHB. He has a background in satellite systems engineering and project management and has been involved in almost all national satellite projects since the late 1980s. He was also project manager for ESA’s first lunar mission, SMART-1 which used electric propulsion to travel from GTO to lunar orbit.

Emil Vinterhav

CTO at ÅAC Microtec. MSc in Engineering Physics at LTH. Emil has been working at leading space companies in many aspects of space technology and engineering since 1999. Emil has promoted space activities on a variety of arenas, teaching at KTH, lobbying thought industry interest organizations and through art projects such as the House on the Moon.

Jan-Erik Wahlund

Ph.D. Space Physics. Professor at IRF. Principal Investigator for the Swedish METAL spacecraft mission to a metallic rich (M-type) asteroid. Project manager and investigator of many payloads on spacecrafts including Cassini, Rosetta and BepiColombo.

Olle Norberg

Vice Rector for Space at Luleå University of Technology. Director-General of the Swedish National Space Agency between 2009 and 2018. Ph.D. degree from the Umeå University in Sweden is space plasma physics, having worked on several national, ESA, and international space projects at the Swedish Institute of Space Physics. Between 2001 and 2009 he was Head of Esrange Space Center, a center for satellite operations as well as sounding rocket and stratospheric balloon launchings.

Karin Nilsdotter

An astropreneur, advisor, advocate for children’s rights and future astronaut. She has been recognized by WIRED as a game changer in the world, and awarded Tech Woman of the Year in Sweden. Karin is CEO and partner of Spaceport Sweden and serves on the board of GEN Space and as a member of the UN expert group Space for Women and of Space Angels, leading source of capital for space startups.
She is an advisor to the Space Frontier Foundation in the USA, National Space Innovation Hub in Australia and further serves on the board of Plan International, for girl’s rights and the Swedish Space Industry Association, Rymdforum. Previously Karin served as the first international board member of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, has founded TEDxKiruna and achieved an Executive MBA.

Mathias Sundin

Co-founder and executive chairman of Warp Institute. Project leader for crowdfunding Beyond Atlas. Former Member of Parliament. Mentor and jury member of XPRIZE Visioneers. Member of World Frontiers Forum at Harvard & MIT. TEDx-speaker and international keynote speaker.

Christer Fuglesang

Professor in Spaceflight at KTH, and part-time advisor to Saab. M.Sc. Engineering Physics at KTH. Ph.D. in particle physics. Astronaut and did two spaceflights with the space shuttle Discovery to ISS where he did 5 spacewalks. A former head of ESA science division regarding ISS and zero gravity at ESTEC.

Sven Grahn

Space Nestor, M.Sc Engineering Physics, KTH. Worked with seven Swedish satellite projects while at Swedish Space Corporation 1975-2006. Retired as VP Engineering. Now a project manager for KTH’s MIST student CubeSat project.