Nonprofit Companies

Copenhagen Suborbitals is a Danish non-profit, all-volunteer amateur space programme founded on 1 May 2008 by Kristian von Bengtson and Peter Madsen, with the stated goal of launching one of its own members into space on a crewed suborbital flight above 100 km altitude using self-funded, home-built rockets. The organisation operates from a workshop and test facility at Refshaleøen in Copenhagen harbour and is funded almost entirely by its Copenhagen Suborbitals Support (CSS) donor club, supplemented by one-off donations, merchandise sales and consultancy work, rather than by venture capital or government contracts. Since its first launch attempt, the HEAT-1X Tycho Brahe booster in 2011 (which reached only 2.8 km before a parachute failure), the group has flown a series of increasingly capable sounding rockets, including Smaragd, Sapphire, Nexø I (2016) and Nexø II, which reached roughly 6.5 km in August 2018 using the group's own BPM-5 bipropellant engine. As of late 2024 the organisation had around 60 active volunteers, led by chairman Jørgen Skyt, and was developing the larger Spica rocket and a pressurised crew capsule, alongside continued engine testing (including the BPM-17 test engine), toward its long-stated but still unmet goal of a crewed flight. Copenhagen Suborbitals remains active and continues to publish regular progress updates on its ongoing hardware development.

For All Moonkind is a New York City-based nonprofit organization founded in 2017 dedicated to protecting human heritage sites in outer space — beginning with the six Apollo lunar landing sites (Apollo 11 through 17) and expanding to all locations where humanity has left artifacts of historic significance. Co-founded by aerospace attorneys Michelle Hanlon and Alissa Ryder, the organization identified a critical gap in international space law: the 1967 Outer Space Treaty explicitly prohibits national appropriation of the Moon or celestial bodies, but is silent on the protection of objects placed there, leaving Apollo hardware, the Lunar Laser Ranging retroreflectors, and other irreplaceable artifacts legally unprotected from disturbance by future missions or commercial operators. For All Moonkind advocates at the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) and through the US Congress for legal frameworks equivalent to UNESCO World Heritage designations for significant off-Earth sites. The organization also engages the commercial lunar sector — working with companies such as Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines whose landers must navigate near Apollo sites — to encourage responsible mission planning that avoids contamination or disturbance of these historically sensitive locations.

National Space Society

Washington, United States nonprofit

The National Space Society (NSS) is a Washington DC-area nonprofit founded in 1974 (through the eventual 1987 merger of the L5 Society and the National Space Institute) that advocates for space exploration, development, and permanent human settlement beyond Earth. The L5 Society was founded by Carolyn and Keith Henson, inspired by physicist Gerard K. O'Neill's vision of large human settlements at Earth-Moon L4/L5 Lagrange points detailed in The High Frontier (1977); the National Space Institute was co-founded by Wernher von Braun. NSS publishes Ad Astra magazine and hosts the annual International Space Development Conference (ISDC), one of the longest-running space advocacy gatherings in the world. NSS members and alumni have played founding roles in numerous space organizations including the International Space University (ISU). Policy priorities include expanding commercial space, establishing property rights frameworks for space resources, development of space solar power as a clean energy source, and increasing NASA's human spaceflight budget. NSS chapters operate globally with thousands of members, making it the largest citizen-led space advocacy organization by membership. Its vision: a spacefaring civilization with humanity living and working throughout the solar system.

The National Stem Cell Foundation (NSCF) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in Louisville, Kentucky, that received its IRS tax exemption in September 2005. Alongside funding adult stem cell research generally, running a STEM teacher-training program and advocating for rare-disease research and bone-marrow donor recruitment, NSCF sponsors a specific line of spaceflight research using the International Space Station National Laboratory to study neurodegenerative disease. Its ISS-sponsored investigations use stem cell-derived brain organoid models -- three-dimensional neuroglial cell cultures grown from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) taken from patients with neurological conditions -- to study neurodegeneration in the absence of gravity, with a focus on Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and primary progressive multiple sclerosis. The foundation runs this program with the Exomedicine Institute, which studies how microgravity affects biological processes relevant to astronaut health, and in partnership with the New York Stem Cell Foundation and the Sanford Stem Cell Institute at UC San Diego. NSCF-sponsored organoid investigations have flown to the ISS on multiple SpaceX Commercial Resupply Services missions, including CRS-18 in July 2019, CRS-24 in December 2021 and CRS-30 in March 2024, with continued flights through 2024-2025. The foundation reported $2.47 million in revenue in 2024, of which the large majority came from donations, according to its IRS filings. The goal of the program, per the ISS National Lab, is to develop improved diagnostics and new therapeutics for neurodegenerative conditions using microgravity as a research tool unavailable on Earth.