Pablo de León

Dr. Pablo de León has three decades devoted to space science and engineering, both in his native Argentina and in the United States.

He is currently a Professor of Space Studies as well as Department Chair. He specialized in the area of Human Spaceflight, Extravehicular Activities, Space Suit Design and surface Planetary Exploration and Habitability.

Dr. de León also acted as Principal Investigator and Science Investigator in several NASA-funded programs.

Prior to that, he worked with the Space Shuttle as payload manager and general designer of the Project PADE (G-761) science experiments package. These experiments flew on mission STS-108 to the International Space Station in December 2001.This project carried seven experiments during the 12 day space flight.

He was also the Integration and Payload Manager on the Pehuensat-1 educational satellite, launched from India in the PSLV-C7 rocket in 2007.

His prior experience was as chief designer and fabrications manager for several underwater-simulation, (EVA) analog, pressure suit systems, including the first privately-built launch and entry space suit, the DL/H-1.

Pablo has flown, as payload specialist, in the NASA KC-135 aircraft more than 80 weightless parabolas carrying four Zero-G fluid dynamics experiments.

Pablo has wrote several books about space projects and space history, founded a magazine of space exploration, and was editor in chief of the "Latin-American Journal of Space Science and Technology". Pablo has participated in more than 50 technical papers on space engineering and life support systems presented at international congresses. He belongs to a number of professional aerospace engineering societies and is a founding member of the Space Generation Advisory Council.