Management Team

Marc Boucher, Chief Executive Officer


Marc Boucher is an entrepreneur, technologist, explorer and bon vivant. He came into his own when spurred on by his brother, he decided to start his first business in 1991 and hasn't looked back since.

Boucher is the founder of aTerra Technologies, co-founder of SpaceRef Interactive and co-founder of the Mars Institute, and has ideas about starting other new ventures.

aTerra Technologies focuses on Internet technologies, in particular data gathering and aggregation, vertical search, web development and is best known for developing original content properties and web crawlers. In 1996 the Canadian Internet Awards Committee awarded Boucher's @Canadas.net web site, "Best Online Site" (Canada) for the year. Boucher created Canada's first search engine, Maple Square, in 1995. In 1998 he was asked by then partner AOL Canada to accompany them as their partner representative to testify before the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission's (CRTC) New Media and the Internet hearings.

Marc Boucher in the high arctic on Devon Island at the HMP Research Station. (July 24, 2005)

SpaceRef Interactive grew out of an idea Boucher and co-founder Keith Cowing had at a meeting in Washington, DC, in early June 1999. On October 1, 1999, SpaceRef launched with little fanfare but soon became a hit. In June of 2000 SpaceRef announced it had licensed SpaceRef content to the Discovery Channel. Today SpaceRef is one of the leading online space news sites comprising 14 web sites in its network and growing. SpaceRef has also begun to modestly sponsor research by first donating the Arthur Clarke Mars Greenhouse to the Haughton-Mars Project (HMP) in 2002. In addition SpaceRef has been managing webcams for the HMP since the summer of 2000. Boucher himself has had the pleasure to participate in the HMP as an Exploration Research Co-Investigator for five field seasons and has been to the high-Arctic base three times, once in the summer of 2000, then 2002 and in 2005.

The Mars Institute is a non-profit research institute co-founded by Boucher in the fall of 2002 at the World Space Congress in Houston. With his colleagues Dr. Pascal Lee, Dr. Stephen Braham, Dr. Charlie Cockell the vision of creating an institute dedicated to the exploration of Mars became a reality. The Institue is now an important participant in the NASA Haughton-Mars Project and continues to develop research proposals for the exploration of Mars.

Boucher lives in Abbotsford, beautiful British Columbia, home of the 2010 Winter Olympics. When not working Boucher spends time enjoying life with his fiancee and relaxes by reading, golfing, hiking, traveling and adding to his modest collection of Japanese woodblock prints.

My Blog: Nano2Sol