Edward Lu

Ed Lu helps protect satellites from hitting debris, and asteroids from hitting Earth. As an astronaut, he flew the Space Shuttle twice, the Russian Soyuz, and served aboard the International Space Station.

Ed Lu is a physicist, engineer, former NASA astronaut, and cofounder of LeoLabs. He has spent the last decade working on solving large technical problems at the intersection of space, public policy, and computer science including preventing asteroid impacts with Earth and preserving the Earth orbit environment from space debris. He is a co-founder of the B612 Foundation and of LeoLabs.

Prior to this he was the leader of Advanced Projects at Google. His NASA career spanned 12 years including flights aboard the Space Shuttle (STS-84 and STS-106), Soyuz TMA-2, and the International Space Station (Expedition 7). He has published peer-reviewed papers on astrodynamics, planetary science, high energy astrophysics, plasma physics, solar physics, cosmology, and statistical physics. He has also published technical policy related editorials in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and Scientific American.

He holds a BSEE in electrical engineering from Cornell University, and a PhD in Applied Physics from Stanford University.