Chris McCormick

“Glad to be a part of space mission’s exploration and discovery, creating new capabilities and extending the knowledge base of humanity.”

Chris McCormick is the President and Chairman of PlanetiQ, and brings 34 years of Aerospace Mission Design, Engineering and Management experience to the table. His primary role is to guide PlanetiQ’s overall mission, as well as raise capital and manage the design and implementation of PlanetiQ’s highest quality atmospheric data collection technology. He is not afraid to move outside the boundaries of institutional knowledge, and has driven the goal to bring together forward-thinking brilliant people to advance technology by over an order of magnitude.

Prior to PlanetiQ, Chris founded Broad Reach Engineering and served as its top executive for 15 years. While at Broad Reach, he also led a team that developed the GPS Radio Occultation sensors for a number of missions, including COSMIC (Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate) where he was also the Lead Systems Engineer. During his tenure, Broad Reach grew to 60 employees and over $28 million in annual revenue before being sold to Moog in 2012. After the sale to Moog, as Vice President of their Space Sector, he was responsible for managing over $250 million in revenue and expanding to include international facilities.

Before launching Broad Reach, Chris was the Program Manager for Spectrum Astro’s role in NASA’s Mars Surveyor Programs, and was the lead electronic test and integration engineer for the Miniature Seeker Technology Integration (MSTI) satellites. Prior to that position, he worked on GPS receivers, inflatable solar arrays, and other cutting-edge technologies as a contractor for the Defense Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA).

He earned his B.S. in Aerospace and Ocean Engineering from Virginia Tech, and earned a place in their Academy of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering Excellence. In order to satisfy the ‘Ocean’ part of his degree, he restores and operates classic wooden boats in Colorado and the Chesapeake Bay.