Covista Communications from 1999 to 2001. Anderson had been an ardent supporter of the development of commercial space activities. He was an early-stage investor in many private space ventures in the 1990s and early 2000s, and one of the first "astropreneurs". His highest-profile space investment was MirCorp, the late 1990s start-up that briefly privatized Russia's aging Mir space station. He reportedly invested as much as $30 million into the venture. From 1996 and 1999, Anderson was also an investor in Rotary Rocket, a now-defunct venture to develop a reusable single-stage-to-orbit crewed spacecraft that hoped to combine the rotors of a helicopter with rocketry to achieve orbit. In the early 2000s, Anderson also founded and served as CEO of Orbital Recovery Corporation, a company developing technology to capture and repair telecommunication satellites. In the mid 2000s, he was accused of not reporting income from investments in non-US companies. Anderson was arrested on February 26, 2005, at Dulles International Airport as he was returning from London. He was held in the Washington, D.C. jail for more than 2 years, before he pled guilty to some of the charges against him in September 2006. He was sentenced to nine years in prison in March 2007. In June 2007, federal district judge Paul L. Friedman ruled that Anderson would not have to pay any restitution to the federal government due to a typographical error by the government in the plea agreement but Anderson would still have to pay restitution to the District of Columbia government. Anderson was released at the end of 2012 after serving the last few months of his term at home in Virginia. In September 2007, Anderson was named by the New Scientist as one of the "Top 10 Influential Space Thinkers". He was also featured in Orphans of Apollo, a documentary about MirCorp. In 2013, Anderson founded Avealto Ltd., based in the UK. Avealto was founded to finance, construct and operate a fleet of high-altitude platforms. Since then, the company has gained an airworthiness certification for the FAA for a 28-meter-long test vehicle. The final design developed by Anderson and co-founder David Chambers is a 100-meter-long helium airship with a payload of telecommunications equipment. The airship would float in a stationary position guided by GPS tracking. References External links About Walt Anderson on the Avealto website American telecommunications industry businesspeople Businesspeople from Washington, D.C. 1953 births Living people American businesspeople