John M. Horack, Ph.D., is the inaugural holder of the Neil Armstrong Chair in Aerospace Policy at the Ohio State University, with tenured, full-professor appointments in the College of Engineering’s Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department and the John Glenn College of Public Affairs. A veteran of the spaceflight industry for more than thirty-five years, Dr. Horack is a globally recognized leader in space-based research, flight hardware development, program management, and space policy. Notable among his current duties at Ohio State are his teaching activities in Aerospace Engineering, focusing on Capstone and Advanced Propulsion, and US Space Policy in the John Glenn College. Funded research includes work for NASA in Nuclear Thermal Propulsion, and he serves as the Ohio State leader for our efforts in Starlab, a next-generation low-Earth orbit space station, and the development of the George Washington Carver Science Park ecosystem to support this research. He mentors more than 75 undergraduate students per year, helping them develop their skills, acquire jobs, and enter graduate school, while also serving as a thesis advisor for MS and PhD seeking students.

Prior to joining Ohio State in 2016, he served for four years as Vice President of Teledyne Brown Engineering’s Space Systems group in Huntsville, Alabama, with responsibility for overseeing all government and commercial Space programs, including Science, International Space Station Payload Operations, Test Support, Flight Hardware, Launch Vehicle and Component Development, and Earth Imaging, including the deployment of the MUSES commercial imaging platform to the ISS and the installation of state-of-the-art Hyperspectral instrumentation for commercial remote sensing, and initiation of development of the Launch Vehicle Stage Adapter (LVSA) for NASA’s Artemis Moon Rocket.

From 2009-2012 Dr. Horack served as Vice President of Research for the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), where he had fiscal oversight for the entire University’s research enterprise, including 14 research centers and laboratories, growing annual research expenditures from ~$65 million to nearly $100 million.

Dr. Horack had an impressive career at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) having achieved the level of Senior Executive Service. His last position at NASA was as manager of the Science and Mission Systems Office, where he was responsible for advanced, complex science and exploration research and nearly 400 civil service personnel and contractors. Projects in this organization included the Chandra X-Ray Telescope, New Frontiers Program Office and Pluto/ New Horizons mission, calibration of the James Webb Space Telescope mirrors, development of the Oxygen Generation System and Water Recovery System on the International Space Station, Geostationary Lightning Mapper, and a range of propulsion technology development activities. He held several titles while at MSFC, including assistant director of the Space Transportation Programs and Projects Office, assistant director for science communications in the Space Sciences Laboratory, and assistant mission scientist for the Astro-2 payload that flew on the Space Shuttle Endeavour.

Dr. Horack also held the positions of gamma ray astrophysics research scientist; assembly, test, and calibration scientist for the Burst and Transient Source Experiment (BATSE); and resident scientist for spacecraft integration at TRW in Redondo Beach, CA, for assembly and test of the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, launched in April 1991 aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis. During the flight of Gamma Ray Observatory, Dr. Horack made key scientific contributions to establish the cosmological distance scale of gamma-ray bursts, and the discovery of upward-moving gamma-ray flashes from terrestrial thunderstorms.

He began his NASA career in 1987 after graduating from Northwestern University with a B.A. in physics and astronomy. He earned a M.A. and Ph.D. in physics from UAH in 1992 and 1993, respectively. He has authored or co-authored more than 100 papers and conference presentations. Dr. Horack is a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society (UK), Associate Fellow of the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics, and is also a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and current board member of the American Astronautical Society. He previously served a term as Vice President for Technical Activities within the International Astronautical Federation, based in Paris, France. Dr. Horack has earned FAA licensed private pilot, instrument and commercial pilot ratings, as well as certification as an FAA flight instructor. He is a native of St. Louis, Missouri.

In February 2020, Dr. Horack summited Mt. Kilimanjaro with a group of disabled US combat veterans, members of the waterboys.org non-profit comprised of active and former players from the National Football League, and clean-water advocates, to bring sustainable freshwater solutions to villages and schools in Tanzania as part of Ohio State University’s Global Water Institute activities.