Career
During his college, Kam began working for Lockheed Martin when he was doing contract for NASA. He also previously held numerous technical and management positions at companies like Ford Aerospace, and Loral. After that he launched his own space company, Stinger Ghaffarian Technologies (SGT), co-founded with Harold Stinger in 1994.
The company operated as a contractor to government agencies focusing on IT, engineering, science applications, and mission operations. It became NASA’s second-largest engineering services contractor and generated over half a billion dollars in annual revenues. The company was acquired by KBR for $355 million in February 2018.[6]
Ghaffarian founded X-energy LLC in 2009. The company designs high-temperature gas-cooled nuclear reactors.[7] He also co-founded a space exploration company Intuitive Machines in 2013.[8][9][10][11] The company holds multiple contracts with NASA.[12]
In 2016, he co-founded another company, Houston-based Axiom Space, with Michael Suffredini.[6][13] The company is focusing on private space missions and facilities and planned to build the first private space station.[14]
As of October 2019, Ghaffarian was appointed to the Nuclear Energy Institute’s Board of Directors.[15]
In 2020, he co-founded Quantum Space, whose mission is to build satellites that provide communications, navigation and space domain awareness in the cislunar space, the area between the Earth and the Moon.[8]
He became a billionaire several times over in first quarter of 2023 after his company, Intuitive Machines, wrapped up a SPAC merger and shares skyrocketed as much as 1,200% in one week.[16]
On February 22, 2024, a robotic lander from Intuitive Machines landed semi-autonomously on the moon.[17] The original plan was for the lander to be autonomous, but "a problem surfaced with the spacecraft’s autonomous navigation system that required engineers on the ground to employ an untested work-around at the 11th hour."[18]
