Kristen John

Kristen John currently serves as the acting lead for Surface Infrastructure and Exploration (“Live”) in NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD).  In this role, she leads technology development for surface power, thermal, dust mitigation, environments, in-situ resource utilization (ISRU), excavation and construction, logistics, and autonomous systems and robotics.  She is the NASA lead for the Lunar Surface Innovation Initiative (LSII) which includes the Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium (LSIC) with Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL).  Under her leadership, Dr. John and her team coordinate across mission directorates, NASA centers, industry, and academia to advance technologies critical to enabling sustained lunar exploration.

Dr. John received her B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.  Her research focused on the properties of materials under extreme conditions, and she worked closely with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Previously, Dr. John was the Technical Integration Lead for Surface Infrastructure and Exploration (“Live”) and the Acting Dust Mitigation and Environments Principal Technologist.  She spent one year as the lead for External Interfaces in the Strategy and Architecture Office in ESDMD and has spent over a year in acting deputy branch chief roles in JSC Engineering’s Project Management and Systems Engineering Division.  Previously, she lead lunar dust mitigation for the Agency and Johnson Space Center as the STMD Dust Mitigation Technical Integration Manager and JSC Technical Discipline Lead for Dust Mitigation, where she worked across Moon to Mars programs to advocate for dust mitigation and advance the state of the art for dust mitigation technologies.  She previously served as the HLS Dust Mitigation Discipline Lead and the PI for NASA’s Dust Testing Standard and several dust testing initiatives. Prior to working lunar dust mitigation, Dr. John spent 5 years in JSC Astromaterials as a contractor and postdoctoral research fellow, where her research focused on studying asteroid regolith behavior.  She was PI, PM and Deputy PM to six payloads delivered to the ISS related to asteroid regolith dynamics and sequencing DNA in space.