Institute for Strategic and Innovative Technologies

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Sr. Vice President – Energy, Power & Exploration

Roger X. Lenard is a retired United States Air Force officer and a retired Sandia National Laboratories Principal Member of the Technical Staff. He has a B.S. in physics and an M.S. in Chemical Physics. Roger has more than forty years’ experience in high technology research and development. Roger is a former USAF fighter pilot and squadron test pilot. Roger is the past Chairman of the International Academy of Astronautics Commission III group covering technology and industry, and is an academician with the International Academy of Astronautics. While at the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, (SDIO) he was the program manager for the Timber Wind nuclear rocket program. This program performed extensive nuclear fuel development and testing and built and tested fuel particles and fuel elements in-core and ex-core. The program designed, developed and tested a critical reactor in 18 months for $19M. Roger, while at the SDIO, also invented the Lightweight Exo Atmospheric Projectile (LEAP) miniaturized kinetic kill vehicle program; the result of that program is the kill vehicle for the Navy’s Upper Tier Defense System. Roger has participated in two Presidential summer studies.

Roger is the Chief Technology Officer of Little Prairie Services, LLC, (LPS), located in Edgewood, New Mexico. LPS completed a contract with NASA for advanced impact criticality analyses for space launch vehicle failures with a nuclear payload by linking SNL’s PRESTO solid mechanics impact code with MCNP, the gold-standard neutron transport code. LPS completed a Phase I SBIR on Neutral Particle Beam advanced technology system during which Roger invented a new negative particle neutralizer. LPS very successfully completed a NASA contract for testing nuclear rocket engine fuel in the MIT reactor. During this program, Roger invented and patented a fuel test capsule capable of testing nuclear fuel in a hydrogen environment to temperatures up to 2700 Kelvins. Roger was a lead systems engineer on the NASA Ares I-X flight test rocket program. Roger has 5 recent patents. Roger is a U.S. citizen and is a deacon at First Baptist Church in Moriarty, NM.