jane poynter
Jane Poynter is one of only eight people ever in history to live sealed in an artificial world for two years. Jane’s preparation for Biosphere 2 involved training to survive in the Australian Outback and onboard a concrete research boat in the Indian Ocean and Red Sea. She was part of the Biosphere from the start, ultimately managing the farm where the crew grew its food.
She is now President of Paragon Space Development Corporation, an aerospace firm that she co-founded with several engineers and fellow biospherian, Taber MacCallum, while inside Biosphere 2. Since leaving the project, Jane has had experiments flown on the International Space Station, the Russian Mir Space Station, and the U.S. Space Shuttle. Currently, she and Paragon are developing life support systems for astronauts and Navy deep-sea divers as well as applying their expertise to high-efficiency ‘green’ building engineering. Jane also recently started Yogi and Company, a multi-media production company.
Jane and Taber married a year after exiting Biosphere 2. They live in Tucson, Arizona, where they race motorcycles on weekends.
Jane has appeared on many television shows and has been interviewed for numerous magazine and newspaper articles about Biosphere 2 and her work in space and the environment. To read some of Jane’s scientific papers and articles, click on any of the titles below.
Poynter is a Paragon co-founder. She has served as SPACEHAB’s Chief Scientist for its Ecosystem in Space experiment on the International Space Station, and three experiments with ants, bees and fish, which flew on STS-107, the Space Shuttle Columbia. Ms. Poynter holds a patent for the Autonomous Biological System. She is Chief Scientist for Carbon Sequestration for the Seawater Foundation, a non-profit that is developing untreated seawater-based agroforestry projects in coastal deserts. She developed carbon sequestration models and ground truth methodologies for carbon credit trading, and documentation for the World Bank’s BioCarbon Fund and the United Nations. Prior to her work with Paragon, Ms. Poynter was a member of the original team to live and work inside Biosphere 2, for which she led the design and implementation of the Intensive Agriculture.
Born: 1962
Hometown: Tuscon, AZ
Occupation: Space entrepreneur, sustainability consultant, founder of Space Perspective
Expeditions: The first mission of Biosphere 2, 1991-1993. On board the R. V. Heraclitus for the Round the Tropic World Expedition, 1984
Favorite Place: Under or on the ocean
Best Discovery: Artificial miniature biospheres work and produced the first animals to complete their life cycles in space
Favorite Items In The Field: Camera, binoculars, hand lens, wind-up flashlight
Personal Heroes: The great biologist Eugene O. Wilson; Queen Elizabeth I of England, who united and built a nation; and Clair Francis, a woman who sailed solo across the Atlantic
Books: Human Experiment: 2 Years and 20 Minutes Inside Biosphere 2; Champions for Change
Website: https://spaceperspective.com/
Advice: Everyone is afraid at times. Learn to use your fear – it can fuel you to do more than you ever imagined possible.
