CEO
Brennen brings a decade of experience designing, building, and operating spacecraft such as the Hubble Space Telescope, OSIRIS-REx, Lucy, JANUS, and Blue Origin's lunar landers, where he drove the time synchronization architecture for the MK1 lander. Deep space is the most extreme GPS denied environment, he has spent his career dealing with position, navigation, and timing the hard way, without the signal everyone on Earth takes for granted. Brennen co-founded Lightyear Space in 2026 with a goal to ensure the critical services provided by GPS remain available to everyone.
COO
Elan spent his career making complicated space programs run smoothly. At ULA and then Blue Origin, he worked where the money, the schedule, and the engineering meet; turning what teams intended to build into something that could actually be resourced and delivered. He worked across Vulcan and both of Blue Origin's lunar landers, first on the planning and controls side and later as a technical project manager owning software and avionics execution. He's spent plenty of time on the other side of the table from NASA and the Space Force. He met Brennen at Blue Origin, where he turned the hardware and software test campaign Brennen believed in into an executable schedule; the same division of labor Lightyear runs on today. At Lightyear, Elan runs operations, government business, and partnerships. He holds a bachelor's degree in finance from McGill University.
“GPS denial was our normal, now it's everyone's. We're building the backup we always wished existed.”