Speaker Biography

Dennis Stone

Project Executive

NASA’s Commercial LEO Development Program

Dennis Stone has over four decades of experience, including 35 years at NASA, in space commercialization, public/private partnerships, program management, space technology, and international relations. He helped manage over $1.2B in investments by NASA in commercial space capabilities.

He is Project Executive for the $400M Commercial Destinations Free Flyer project in NASA’s Commercial LEO Development Program. In this role, he manages NASA’s funding and technical support to companies developing commercial space stations to eventually replace the International Space Station (ISS). Prior to this he led Collaborations on Commercial Space Capabilities partnerships which provided NASA’s technical support to the SpaceX Starship, ULA Vulcan/Centaur 5, Northrup Grumman Mission Extension Vehicle, and Final Frontier space suits.

He helped lead NASA’s successful Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) partnerships to develop commercial cargo capabilities to LEO. He chaired the business committee in both COTS investment rounds which invested nearly $800M in the SpaceX Falcon 9/Dragon and Orbital Sciences Antares/Cygnus. He also helped select and manage NASA’s first $50M investment Commercial Crew partnerships.

Prior to COTS, Mr. Stone worked in the ISS Program on system engineering, avionics, international relations, risk management, and technology development. Before joining NASA, he worked for McDonnell Douglas, Ford Aerospace, and Rockwell in civil and commercial space program engineering and management.

He serves as volunteer President of World Space Week Association, which coordinates UN-declared World Space Week, celebrated globally each October 4-10. He has dual Bachelor of Science degrees from the University of Hawaii in electrical engineering and physics.