Chris Kemp is the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Astra, the fastest company in history to reach orbit with a privately developed rocket.
Chris is also the only known founder-CEO to have taken a company public and then private again without the backing of private equity or a buyout firm — leading Astra through every phase, from scrappy startup to IPO, and then back to a focused, profitable private company accelerating the next era of space infrastructure.
Building on the heritage of multiple orbital launches and significant investment in its rocket factory, Astra is now advancing development of a next-generation mobile launch system designed for rapid, cost-effective access to space. In parallel, Astra is scaling delivery of the best-selling, most reliable, and highest-efficiency satellite engines in orbit today, supporting both commercial and national security missions.
Before founding Astra, Chris served as Chief Technology Officer at NASA, where he led the agency’s pioneering shift to cloud computing and co-founded the OpenStack project — laying the foundation for open, scalable government infrastructure.
His journey is featured in the HBO documentary Wild Wild Space, which explores the modern space race and the rivalries driving it. The film is based on Ashlee Vance’s book When the Heavens Went on Sale, where Chris’s story is also prominently featured.
His mission remains the same: to improve life on Earth from space.
