Joel Sercel

Joel C. Sercel, Founder and CEO of Trans Astronautica Corporation. He is a proven space technology pioneer, team leader and talent magnet. He runs an agile company where young engineers are inspired and empowered to build, test, break, and bust through technical limits and mature innovations at breakneck speed. His technical expertise spans space mission design, space propulsion, satellite design, architectural design, and systems engineering. He is also a certified KAI Practitioner (the psychology of creativity) and an expert in practical methods of innovation. Joel has been awarded more of NASA’s prestigious Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) funding than anyone else. His expertise and leadership have been sought by world class organizations including NASA, Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, the US intelligence community, and the US Air Force. Joel’s PhD is from Caltech in plasma physics and space propulsion. He spent 14 years at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory where he served in nearly all of the technical roles and conceived the first ion propulsion system used in deep space missions to a comet and asteroids Ceres and Vesta. Joel served as the founding CTO for Momentus, a space company currently going public through a SPAC, before returning to TransAstra to fulfill his lifelong dream of building the tech that will enable a thriving in-space economy and offer unbound potential for future generations.