THE FOUNDATION The Earthlight Foundation (ELF) is a non-profit, non-partisan organization founded and incorporated in 2012 to support the expansion of life and humanity beyond the Earth by providing vision, leadership and credibility. The organization is run by a small core team encompassing broad field expertise relevant to space exploration, settlement, engineering and communications. ELF is minimalist in management structure to remain flexible and drive effective execution. WHY EARTHLIGHT? The term EarthLight comes from a story told by Apollo astronaut John Young, who described a haunting blue green light bathing the lunar surface whenever the sun was down and the Earth was up. This blue green light was bright enough to read by and illuminated the world’s surface, although the cameras of the day could not capture it in the way the astronaut’s eyes were able to do. This light, and its inherent spectrum, can only be created by the reflection of the rays from a sun of the same magnitude as ours, bouncing off of a living planet like the Earth. It is unique. OUR VISION ELF believes the purpose of living is to treasure and celebrate life, to explore everywhere that we can, to always push beyond what is known, to seek, to learn, to live and carry life with us where it does not exist, and experiencing all that can be seen, touched and known of this incredible universe. This is belief is captured in our overarching vision: “To carry the light of life to places now dark, the seeds of life to places now dead, and the eyes, hands and minds of humanity to places yet unseen, untouched and unknown.” OUR MISSION To support the expansion of life and humanity beyond the Earth by creating, catalyzing and managing projects and activities that lead to public inspiration, education and action relating to space exploration and settlement – and to protect and expand the domain of life and humanity on this world by returning and applying the knowledge thus gained.