Dr. James Crawford
James is the founder of Orbital Insight. Since 2013 the company has been pursuing the mission
of processing geospatial data at petabyte scale to help commercial and government customers
understand what we are doing on and to the Earth. In 2024 the company was acquired by
Privateer Space and has since operated as a fully owned subsidiary. In addition to being the
founder of Orbital Insight, James also works as Chief Strategy Officer for the combined
company.
Previously he was SVP of Science and Engineering at the Climate Corporation through its $1B
acquisition by Monsanto. Before his time at Climate he was CTO and Software Architect at
Moon Express — a company with the goal of putting the first commercial robot on the Moon.
Previous to that he was engineering Director of Google Book Search where he was in charge of
Google’s project to scan, index, and make searchable the world’s books.
James holds PhD and Master’s degrees in Computer Science from the University of Texas at
Austin, and a BA in Math and Computer Science from Rice University.
Frank Backes
Frank Backes is the Chief Executive Officer at Capella Space, with 30+ years in the satellite launch, command, control, and communications industries. Previously, Mr. Backes served as Senior Vice President for Kratos Space Federal and Commercial Cyber. He is a technology pioneer in the systematic and continuous application of cyber security solutions for space systems. Mr. Backes is the former Chief Executive Officer for Braxton Technologies LLC and Braxton Science and Technology Group, LLC, leading manufacturers of launch, command and control software for intelligence, military and commercial applications.
He was recognized with the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2009 for achievements in the aerospace industry. Mr. Backes is the founder and president of the Space ISAC and serves on the board of directors for Modern Technology Solutions Inc. (MTSI). He received a BSEE in Semiconductor Physics from the University of California at San Diego along with minors in communications/marketing and computer hardware.
Adam Maher
Mr. Adam Maher serves as Founder & CEO of Ursa Space Systems Inc (Ursa), whose services enable users to research, monitor, search, and discover changes in physical objects around the globe, from the perspective of space. Ursa Space’s platform orchestrates the collection, analytics, and fusion of data from a virtual constellation of radar, optical, and RF satellites to automate and abstract the complicated process of gaining access to, processing, and fusing satellite data with terrestrial data sources.
Adam’s vision is to improve the satellite Earth observation user experience by bringing the community of traditional and new space members together to illuminate how our physical world impacts daily actions by creating a virtual mosaic of the world that anyone can access. He founded Ursa in 2014 to develop this vision of connecting people to information rich data derived from synthetic aperture radar, seeing an obvious frustration and disconnect between the technology and those who could take full advantage of the capabilities. Today Ursa’s mission is to enable a community of developers to build applications that can illuminate how our physical world impacts daily actions, to understand how changes in the economy,
supply chains, and the geopolitical landscape impact daily decisions, and reveal those changes in our ever-evolving world to leaders, professionals, and, one day, all people.
Prior to founding Ursa Space, Adam worked at MAXAR (Space Systems Loral). There, he served as a system engineer from paper to launch for complete satellite builds and multiple successful commercial satellite proposals. In addition to broadband satellite communications work, he also worked on efforts in space robotics, electric propulsion, Earth observation, and government programs.
Adam holds a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering and Master of Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, from Cornell University. At Ursa Space Systems Inc., he uses his knowledge of the satellite industry to fuel his vision of a living world map, where the connection between satellites and users is no longer complicated or difficult, and users are empowered to make better decisions with better data.