Astra Nova School, successor to Ad Astra, is a non-profit online school founded by Elon Musk and Joshua Dahn on the campus of SpaceX. The Washington Post said it was possibly "the most exclusive school in the world".[1]
Ad Astra (meaning "To the stars" in Latin) was launched in 2014 after Musk pulled his five sons out of school,[2] saying in an interview that "They weren't doing the things I thought should be done."[3] Musk hired Joshua Dahn to design the new school and teach a small group of students, mainly Musk's own children and those of SpaceX employees, for free.[4] [5] Grades, foreign language studies, and music lessons were notably absent from the school's curriculum.[6] The school left SpaceX campus in June 2020 when Musk's children graduated.[7]
In Walter Isaacson's 2023 biography, Elon Musk, Musk states, "They went there until they were about fourteen but then I thought they should be introduced to the real world for high school. What I should have done is extend Ad Astra through high school."[8]
In August 2020, the former faculty and students of Ad Astra created the non-profit Astra Nova School.[9]
The curriculum focuses on first principles thinking, decision making, and collaboration.[10] According to The New York Times, Musk and Dahn split intellectual property of the school 50-50 [11] Ad Astra and Astra Nova use various open-ended scenarios, called "Conundrums", that encourage constructive disagreement. Conundrums have been used in millions of classrooms in partnership with ClassDojo.[12] Synthesis, a venture-backed educational technology company founded in 2020, is also based on the work of Astra Nova.[13]
The school is currently run by Joshua Dahn and co-founders Dr. Rosemary Rohde and Tara Safronoff.[14] The school accepts students ages 10–14 and currently has an enrollment of 300 from around the world.[15]