Executive Profiles — Alethium Corp.

Henry Judd

CEO, Co-Founder

Mr. Judd has over 45 years of experience in computer information systems, large-program project management, systems engineering, and mission-critical software development — including more than 35 years of direct support to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. His career spans project manager for the Jason Ground System, principal system and software engineer across a portfolio of NASA JPL satellite missions, and chief executive of a long-standing federal small-business contractor. Mr. Judd is CEO and co-founder of Alethium Corp, which he co-founded in March of 2002 alongside Richard Wissinger. Through Alethium Corp he has continued to lead the company's contributions to NASA JPL satellite ground systems for over two decades — including Jason-2 and Jason-3, WISE / NEOWISE, ASTERIA, and SPHEREx — while guiding the company's technical strategy and federal-contracting growth.

Mr. Judd Successfully managed the design, development, test and implementation of the 800,000 lines of code Jason-1 satellite ground system. Designed the overall hardware/software architecture for the JTCCS (Jason-1 Telemetry, Command, and Communications System) and delivered the entire system on schedule and under budget. The JTCCS was awarded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Software of the Year award in 2002 and Honorable Mention for the 2002 NASA Software of the Year; Mr. Judd is a co-recipient of both. He is also a recipient of JPL's Meritorious Service Award and the NASA Meritorious Achievement award.

Under Mr. Judd's leadership as CEO, Alethium Corp serves as a direct prime contractor to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and has contributed to JPL satellite ground systems for over two decades — not as a subcontractor through any other firm. The company was awarded JPL's Supplier Trust and Recognition (STAR) certificate and was named JPL Small Vendor of the Year for FY23. Alethium Corp is a SAM.gov-registered federal contractor (UEI HNF1JXGKW5P7, NAICS 541511 — Custom Computer Programming Services) — its direct-award contract status with JPL is verifiable on SAM.gov.

Mr. Judd was responsible for bringing the US Navy SFTS project to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Successfully gathered and defined the functional requirements for the SFTS and published the Functional Requirements Document (FRD). Designed the overall architecture for the implementation of the SFTS.

Mr. Judd was an independent consultant performing as senior system software engineer and cognizant design engineer at JPL on the US Air Force Global Decision Support System (GDSS). Principal designer of three major GDSS subsystems in the areas of command and control, logistics support and management briefing systems. Mr. Judd Successfully designed, managed and implemented the logistics command and control systems for GDSS. Designed and implemented the management briefing system (MBS) for GDSS. Designed and implemented the relational database for GDSS and MBS. Awarded Meritorious Achievement Award from the US Air Force Military Airlift Command (MAC) and JPL.

Richard D. Wissinger

President, Co-Founder

Mr. Wissinger has over 45 years of experience in computer information systems, real-time and mission-critical software development, systems analysis, and engineering management — continuously supporting NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory since 1998. His career spans U.S. Navy strategic communications systems, satellite ground-control software for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, enterprise hardware/software engineering, and independent product development.

Mr. Wissinger graduated with honors from the Computer Learning Center in Springfield, Virginia in 1985 and holds an honorable discharge from the U.S. Navy (Data Processing Technician, 1980–1985). He is an active Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Dallas Section.

Mr. Wissinger is President and co-founder of Alethium Corp. He co-founded the company in March of 2002 alongside Henry Judd following his delivery of the Jason-1 Telemetry, Command, and Communications System (JTCCS) — an 800,000-line C/C++/Java platform supporting four generations of Jason-class ocean-altimetry satellites over 20-year mission lifecycles. Engaged as an independent contractor on the JTCCS team, Mr. Wissinger delivered the system in three months against an 18-month projection. The JTCCS was awarded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Software of the Year award in 2002 and Honorable Mention for the 2002 NASA Software of the Year; Mr. Wissinger is a co-recipient of both. He is also a recipient of JPL's Meritorious Service Award, and Alethium Corp was awarded JPL's Supplier Trust and Recognition (STAR) certificate.

Through Alethium Corp, Mr. Wissinger has continued to contribute to NASA JPL satellite ground systems for over two decades — Jason-2 and Jason-3 (continued ocean-altimetry support for JPL and NOAA, modernized to single-baseline Java 1.8 with ODBC integration and dynamic external earth-terminal communication); WISE/NEOWISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, later repurposed for near-Earth object survey); Asteria (CubeSat technology demonstration); and SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer — a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission launched March 2025). Alethium Corp was named JPL Small Vendor of the Year for FY23 and is a SAM.gov-registered federal contractor (UEI HNF1JXGKW5P7, NAICS 541511 — Custom Computer Programming Services).

Mr. Wissinger's prior commercial engineering experience includes Hewlett-Packard (Systems/Software Engineer V, 2005–2006), where he led the worldwide Memory Module Replacement Program covering 14 language groups across HP's notebook division; Stepstone Corporation (Objective-C compiler porting and maintenance); and earlier independent consulting engagements supporting Jason ground-system development through AverStar, Incorporated. As a U.S. Navy Data Processing Technician (1980–1985), he designed and implemented software for the NAVCOMPARS (Naval Communications Processing And Routing System) and LDMX (Local Digital Message Exchange) strategic communications systems on dual Unisys Series 90/60 systems, and held a Secret clearance.

Jon D. Breen

Mission Operations System Administration

Mr. Breen has over 25 years of experience in mission-operations systems administration, systems engineering, network engineering, and the day-to-day stewardship of project-critical infrastructure at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He performs this work on behalf of Alethium Corp., which holds a direct prime contract with JPL. He has been essential to the successful launch and on-orbit operations of multiple JPL satellite missions — including Jason-1, WISE / NEOWISE, SPHEREx, and others — providing the ground-system infrastructure that mission-operations teams depend on around the clock, from pre-launch integration through years of nominal flight operations.

Mr. Breen is responsible for the daily operation of all project-critical computers across the missions he supports — software, hardware, networking, troubleshooting, testing, and integration of subsystems — plus all updates and modifications driven by each Flight Project's evolving requirements. He works directly with mission planners, flight controllers, and software teams to keep operational baselines healthy, security postures current, and uptime aligned with launch-window and contact-pass schedules.

In support of the Jason-series ocean-altimetry missions, Mr. Breen designs, deploys, and maintains the secure inter-agency network interfaces between JPL and NOAA for Jason-2 and Jason-3 — including site-to-site IPsec VPN tunnels and dedicated network circuits — so that mission data products, telemetry, and command traffic flow reliably and securely between the partner agencies. This includes the routing, firewall, certificate, and DNS configurations needed for high-availability cross-agency operations.

His technical work spans modern Linux server administration (RHEL / Rocky / AlmaLinux, Ubuntu LTS), virtualization and containerization, secure network and firewall engineering, VPN tunnels and dedicated-circuit provisioning, configuration management and automation, web and application server deployment (Apache, NGINX, Tomcat), and database administration across PostgreSQL, MySQL / MariaDB, and Oracle. He also handles DNS and TLS certificate lifecycle management, public-key infrastructure, and the day-two operations of public-facing services for federal and commercial customers — built on lessons learned across decades of NASA flight-project support.