Jason Andrews

Jason Andrews is an American space and technology entrepreneur. He co-founded with his wife Marian Joh, Andrews Space in 1999, founded Spaceflight Inc. in 2010, BlackSky Global LLC in 2013, and integrated all three entities together in 2015 under Spaceflight Industries. Early life and education Andrews grew up in Seattle, Washington and attended the University of Washington where he graduated with a BS in Aerospace Engineering. In 1995, he joined Kistler Aerospace in Kirkland Washington, one of the early space startups developing a fully reusable two stage launch vehicle to serve the emerging LEO communications market. His first role was as launch vehicle performance analyst, where he developed the "rocket back" trajectory to recover the first stage at the launch site. Andrews then led the Kistler propulsion system development contracts with Pratt & Whitney and Aerojet, and went on to manage the K-1 vehicle integration team located in El Segundo, California. Andrews Space, Inc. Andrews left Kistler in late 1998 and started Andrews Space & Technology in July 1999; the name was shortened to Andrews Space in 2003. The company's first two contracts were a NASA Phase 1 SBIR to develop the Mini-Mag Orion Propulsion System, and supporting Buzz Aldrin's company Starcraft Boosters. Andrews led day-to-day operations as president, working with his father (Dana Andrews - CTO) and wife (Marian Joh - CEO). In 2007 the firm diversified into space hardware and acquired Automated Controlled Environments Inc (ACEi), a company focused on nanosat subsystems. Andrews was one of the first people to identify and articulate the “killer app” for cubesats and nanosats: deployment of swarms of spacecraft to observe the planet in near real time. From 2008 to 2012 his firm developed a series of cubesat and nanosat products, many as part of a contract with the US Army Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC) to study how to “put UAVs in space”, which required deploying a constellation of nanosats to observe the planet in near real time. This effort would evolve into the Kestrel Eye 2 spacecraft development effort.