A member of The Explorers Club, he visited the South Pole several times, descended to the Challenger Deep of the Mariana Trench, travelled into space, and held three Guinness World Records.

He spent his early childhood in Hong Kong, then a Crown Colony, and was inspired by the Apollo 11 landing while watching the event on TV with his parents in 1969.

[1] Between 9 and 11 July 2019, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, Harding, along with Terry Virts, led a team of aviators that took the Guinness World Record for a circumnavigation of the Earth via the North and South Poles in a Gulfstream G650ER in 46 hours and 40 minutes.

[9][10] Harding flew to space as part of the suborbital Blue Origin NS-21 mission, on 4 June 2022, on the fifth crewed spaceflight of the New Shepard rocket.

[18] On 22 June, two days before what would have been Harding's 59th birthday, a debris field was discovered approximately 490 metres (1,600 ft) from the bow of the Titanic.

A United States Coast Guard press conference later confirmed that the debris was consistent with a catastrophic loss of the pressure hull, resulting in an implosion and the instant death of all on board.