Alex Karl

Alex Karl is a German space engineer and working for Space Applications Services at ESA’s European Astronaut Centre in the Astronaut Operations Division.

Alex has been working with the International Space Station (ISS) since 2009, 10 years as ISS Flight Operations Engineer responsible for payloads and since 2019 as part of the Flight Control Team as EUROCOM – the role tasked with communicating directly with the astronauts working with European systems and payloads on the ISS. He is also part of the Crew Support Office, supporting ESA astronauts and their families during mission assignments.

In his spare time he is actively involved within the planetary defense community. Currently, he is one of the Co-Chairs of the biennial IAA Planetary Defense Conference (PDC) and Chair of the International Astronautical Federation’s (IAF) Technical Committee on Planetary Defense and Near-Earth Objects (NEOs). His work is focused on public education and communication about asteroids and planetary defense.

Alex has been working on outreach and education projects about NEOs and planetary defense since 2007. He served as Chair of the Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC) from 2007-2009 and created the NEO Project Group in 2007 which he led for 8 years, providing youth input to the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UN COPUOS) Action Team 14 on NEOs and making planetary defense and NEO science accessible to the global youth via events, programs and ongoing activities such as The Move An Asteroid Technical Paper Competition, the Find An Asteroid Search Campaign, and the Name An Asteroid campaign.

Alex has been appointed as member of the Program and Organization Committee of the IAA PDC since 2009 and has been invited to join as one of the conference’s Co-Chairs since 2019. He has been involved with the IAF Technical Committee on Planetary Defense and NEOs since 2012 and has been elected its Chair since 2018, and was re-elected for a second term until 2024.

Alex is based in Brussels, Belgium.