Speaker · Argentina Space 2026
Lucas Paganini
Space Program Executive · NASA HQ
Executive in NASA’s Astrophysics Division, where he leads the Roman Space Telescope, with a career spanning missions such as Juno, JUICE and Europa Lander, more than 30 scientific papers and an asteroid named in his honour. Argentine, he trained as an engineer at Universidad de Mendoza.
November 11, 12 and 13, 2026 · Salta Convention Center
About
Lucas Paganini is a Program Executive in NASA's Astrophysics Division in Washington. Since 2022 he has been part of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, first as Deputy Program Executive and since 2024 as Lead Program Executive, responsible for taking the mission from development to launch. He is also Program Executive for the Exoplanet Exploration Program.
Before joining the agency's headquarters he built a career as a planetary scientist: he was a research scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center, studying the chemical composition of comets, and led as principal investigator the team that detected water vapour on Europa, one of Jupiter's moons (Nature Astronomy, 2020). He served as Program Scientist for the Juno mission and for NASA's contribution to ESA's JUICE mission. Asteroid 33323 Lucaspaganini is named after him, and Universidad de Mendoza, where he trained as an engineer, named him a Guest of Honour.
On the program
- Great NASA missions and the search for habitable worlds
- Moderator: Closing plenary conversation
Career highlights
- Lead Program Executive, Roman Space Telescope, NASA (since 2024)
- Program Executive, Exoplanet Exploration Program, NASA (since 2023)
- Program Scientist for the Juno mission and for NASA's contribution to JUICE (2021–2022)
- Europa Lander pre-project Program Executive and Solar System Observations lead, NASA (2019–2022)
- Research scientist, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (2010–2019)
- Researcher, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Germany (2004–2010)
Education
- PhD in Applied Physics and Astronomy, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg (Germany)
- Master's in Telecommunications Engineering, Universidad de Mendoza
- Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Universidad de Mendoza
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