John Thornton
CEO, ASTROBOTIC
FOR JOHN THORNTON, ENGINEERING is a family business. Three generations—his grandfather, both parents, and siblings—all pursued engineering careers.
Thornton shared that he loves building things and working hands on—most notably so with his company, Astrobotic. The pioneering space company began as a small start-up coming out of Carnegie Mellon University, and today employs 275 people.
Astrobotic started back in 2007, during the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression. About a year later, NASA canceled its Constellation program.
“We were in Pittsburgh, trying to build a Moon company when no one was even thinking about going to the Moon,” Thornton said. “We, quite literally, had potential investors laugh at us when we explained the company’s mission.”
Despite the challenges, Thornton and Astrobotic continued pushing forward bringing partners, payload customers, and staff on board, allowing them to be ready when NASA’s CLPS initiative was announced in 2018. Astrobotic flew the first NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) mission in space and is currently building the Griffin lander to transport NASA’s VIPER rover to the south pole of the Moon.
“ The future of the Moon is bright. We’ve only scratched the surface.”
John Thornton
Thornton shared that the next step is establishing power and communications infrastructure on the Moon.
“LunaGrid, a commercial power service for the poles of the Moon, is a power generation and distribution service that will deliver power by the watt to landers, rovers, habitats, and other lunar surface systems.” The service will enable space agencies’, companies’, and nonprofits’ systems to survive the lunar night and operate indefinitely on the Moon—starting at the lunar south pole.
With leading an organization like Astrobotic, Thornton said it’s important to be able to understand both complex systems and business challenges when making decisions.
“My background as an engineer has only enhanced my ability to successfully lead an organization like ours,” he said.
Thornton offered words of advice to the next generation of engineers: “Practice what you learn in school and build, build, build.” School teaches you the theory and engineering principles, he explained, but those skills are truly developed when you apply the principles in real life. Engaging in extracurriculars, clubs, and competitions are a few ways to become more well-rounded in your engineering discipline, according to Thornton.
“That type of experience can give a young engineer an edge in the real-world,” he said.
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