About Mavericks Civilian Space Foundation

VISION

The Mavericks Civilian Space Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)3 educational foundation established in 2007 with a vision to create the worlds first civilian non-profit international space program by the next generation of civilian space explorers, our youth.  Just as John F. Kennedy challenged a nation to put a man on the moon in 10 years, we offer a similar challenge to civilians and our youth in middle school, high school and university institutions internationally, to build and fly their own vehicles into space, independent of governments or as commercial for profit enterprises.

MISSION

Our mission is to establish and operate civilian space programs in high schools and middle schools which enable the completion of the STEM education pipeline between primary schools and post-secondary institutions, while facilitating civilian space research through competitive challenges, prizes and social networking.

PHILOSOPHY

We are passionate that the next generation of space explorers evolves from civilians and the youth in our society, and we are seeking those out with the “Right Stuff,” just as the United States government did with the early Mercury Program astronauts. By operating space flight missions in high schools we can provide these gifted students a single focus that not only inspires others, but engages them and accelerates their interest in STEM education and careers. Civilian space exploration uniquely provides a single activity within which these selected next generation of space explorers can demonstrate their mastery of STEM principals and advance their engineering application experience and exposure to new technologies.

In support of this philosophy, we focus our operations in three distinct initiatives:

  • Civilian and high school STEM Education Space Flight Missions
  • Facilitating Space Exploration Research in five directed areas that will advance
  • Competitive Challenges and Competitions that offer prize incentives for proven solutions to strategic civilian space flight barriers and technological innovation