SPACE SYMPOSIUM SPEAKERS

Dr. Edward Lu

Dr. Edward Lu

Head
Asteroid Institute

Founder, B612 Foundation

Dr. Lu served as a NASA Astronaut for twelve years. He flew aboard the Space Shuttle twice, and flew on the Russian Soyuz to the International Space Station where he did a six-month tour. He has logged over 206 days in space. Dr. Lu has been an active research scientist working in the fields of solar physics, astrophysics, plasma physics, cosmology, and planetary science. He held positions at the High Altitude Observatory, the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics, and the Institute for Astronomy. At Google, he led the Advanced Projects group which built imaging and data gathering systems for Google Earth and Maps, Google StreetView, and Google Books. He is also a co-founder of LeoLabs, a startup building and operating a network of ground based phased array radars for tracking satellites and space debris in Low Earth Orbit.  

He is a Cofounder of B612 foundation and serves as Executive Director of the Asteroid Institute, a program of B612 Foundation, where he oversees research to build a dynamic 4-dimensional map of the asteroids in our solar system. This map is the key to protecting Earth from asteroid impacts, and will also help spur future scientific exploration and space resource utilization. In addition, Dr. Lu is the co-inventor of the Gravity Tractor, a controllable means of changing the trajectory of an asteroid.  

NASA Service

  • Space shuttle mission STS-84 in 1997 as a Mission Specialist aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis to the Russian Mir space station
  • Flew as Payload Commander and Lead Spacewalker on Space Shuttle Atlantis on shuttle mission STS-106 to the International Space Station in 2000, in which he carried out a six-hour spacewalk to perform construction work on the International Space Station
  • Flight engineer on Soyuz TMA-2 (9 weeks after the loss of Space Shuttle Columbia) and spent six months in space in 2003 as part of ISS Expedition 7, with cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko

Related Sessions

Salon Luncheon: Exploration Laboratories LLC

Thursday, April 16, 2026

12:15 pm - 1:45 pm

Track: