SpaceX
As president and COO of SpaceX, Gwynne Shotwell is responsible for day-to-day operations and for managing customer and strategic relations to support company growth. She joined SpaceX in 2002 as vice president of Business Development and built the Falcon vehicle family manifest to more than 70 launches, representing more than $10 billion in business. She serves on the SpaceX board of directors.
Before joining SpaceX, Ms. Shotwell spent more than 10 years at the Aerospace Corporation, where she held positions in space systems engineering and technology as well as project management. She was promoted to chief engineer of an MLV-class satellite program, managed a landmark study for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on commercial space transportation, and completed an extensive analysis of space policy for NASA’s future investment in space transportation. She was subsequently recruited to be director of Microcosm’s Space Systems Division, where she served on the executive committee and directed corporate business development.
In 2014, Ms. Shotwell was appointed to the US Export-Import Bank’s Advisory Committee and the FAA Management Advisory Council. She has received the World Technology Award for Individual Achievement in Space, was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame, and is an elected fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
SpaceX supports science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) programs locally as well as national engineering programs and competitions. Through leadership in both corporate and external programs, Ms. Shotwell has helped raise over $1.4 million for STEM education programs reaching thousands of students nationwide.
Ms. Shotwell received, with honors, her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Northwestern University in mechanical engineering and applied mathematics, and serves on the advisory council for Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering. She has authored dozens of papers on a variety of space-related subjects.
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SpaceX
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SpaceX designs, manufactures and launches the world’s most advanced rockets and spacecraft. The company was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk to revolutionize space transportation, with the ultimate goal of making life multiplanetary. SpaceX has gained worldwide attention for a series of historic milestones. It is the only private company ever to return a spacecraft from low-Earth orbit, which it first accomplished in December 2010. The company made history again in May 2012 when its Dragon spacecraft attached to the International Space Station, exchanged cargo payloads, and returned safely to Earth — a technically challenging feat previously accomplished only by governments. Since then Dragon has delivered cargo to and from the space station multiple times, providing regular cargo resupply missions for NASA. SpaceX believes a fully and rapidly reusable rocket is the pivotal breakthrough needed to substantially reduce the cost of space access. The majority of the launch cost comes from building the rocket, which historically has flown only once. Compare that to a commercial airliner – each new plane costs about the same as Falcon 9 but can fly multiple times per day and conduct tens of thousands of flights over its lifetime. Following the commercial model, a rapidly reusable space launch vehicle could reduce the cost of traveling to space by a hundredfold. While most rockets are designed to burn up on reentry, SpaceX rockets can not only withstand reentry but can also successfully land back on Earth and refly again. SpaceX’s family of Falcon launch vehicles are the first and only orbital class rockets capable of reflight. Depending on the performance required for the mission, Falcon lands on one of our autonomous spaceport droneships out on the ocean or one of our landing zones near our launch pads.