Dr. Chris Boshuizen
Board Member of Space for Humanity; Australian astronaut, scientist, entrepreneur, investor, and musician
Dr. Chris Boshuizen is an Australian astronaut, scientist, entrepreneur, investor, and musician. Boshuizen completed his PhD in physics at The University of Sydney in 2005 before accepting a position at the NASA Ames Research Center in California. There Dr Boshuizen established Singularity University and most notably co-created the NASA Phonesat.
After leaving NASA he co-founded Planet Labs, the first company to employ nanosatellites in a commercial capacity, radically reducing the cost of lifting payloads into space and paving the way for today’s large constellations of spacecraft. Today, Planet operates the largest fleet of Earth-observing satellites and maps the entire surface of the Earth daily, enabling key insights into our changing world that were previously unobtainable.
Boshuizen was the 2014 Advance Global Australian of the Year award winner, and has subsequently become a member of the Advance Board of Directors where he is an active spokesperson for successful Australians abroad. He is the founder and managing partner of Interplanetary Capital, an angel fund focusing on new space industry and deep tech start-up companies , leveraging his prior experience as a company operator, and investment Partner at Bay Area-based DCVC.
Boshuizen is also a musician and releases music under the name “Dr Chrispy”. He also runs an independent record label, Interplanetary Records, which supports over a dozen independent musical artists. In 2023 he was an executive producer on an upcoming film, starring Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris, which draws upon the writer-director’s personal experience as a military veteran. Dr Boshuizen flew to space as a commercial astronaut on Blue Origin’s New Shepard NS-18 mission on October 13 2021.