Gérard Brachet

Gérard Brachet is Managing Director of Sic Itur, an aerospace consulting firm he founded. He earned an engineering degree from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Aéronautique in 1967 and a MS in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the University of Washington in 1968. He began his professional career at the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) in France, and from 1972 to 1982 was successively Head of the Orbit Determination and Spacecraft Dynamics Department, the Scientific Programs Division and the Application Programs Division. From 1982 to 1994, Mr. Brachet was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of SPOT Image. During this time, he was an advisor on space matters to the European Commission.

Mr. Brachet returned to CNES in 1994 where he was successively the Director for Programs, Planning and Industrial Policy, Scientific Director and became its Director General from July 1997 to September 2002. As such, he headed the French delegation to ESA from 1998 to 2002.

Since January 2004 he has been an independent aerospace consultant and served as a Chairman of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) from 2006 to 2008.

From 1981 to 1989 Mr. Brachet was President of the Sociéte Française de Photogrammétrie et de Télédétection (French Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing). In 1992 he received the Brock Gold Medal Award, a prize that is awarded every four years by the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. He is the only French person to have been distinguished in this way. In 1994, he received the Remote Sensing Society Award. He is Vice President of the International Academy of Astronautics and President of the Académie de l'Air et de l'Espace (Air and Space Academy). Mr. Brachet is an Officier de l'Ordre national du Mérite (1997) and an Officier de la Légion d'Honneur (1986).