Nicholas Florio is an incoming Spacesuit Project Engineer supporting work at NASA Johnson Space Center and a graduate student in Bioastronautics at the University of Colorado Boulder. His background focuses on human spaceflight, lunar surface systems, EVA operations, human factors integration, and mission operations support for future crewed exploration missions.

Nicholas previously served as the Lunar Dust Mitigation Lead for Lunar Outpost’s Lunar Dawn Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) program supporting future Artemis surface operations. In this role, he led development of lunar dust mitigation strategies and test campaigns, defined system-level mitigation requirements and verification approaches, evaluated dust impacts on astronaut mobility and mission usability, and supported human factors and crew systems testing for long-duration lunar surface missions.

Prior to this, Nicholas worked at Blue Origin as a Dust Mitigation Systems Engineer supporting the Blue Moon MK2 lunar lander program, where he developed crew and vehicle dust mitigation strategies through requirements development, system design guidance, and suited human factors testing. He also supported Fault Management and System Autonomy (FMSA) development for the MK1 lunar lander program, contributing to system safety analysis and autonomy architecture development.

Nicholas started his career as a Systems Engineer within Space Advanced Programs at Lockheed Martin, supporting systems modeling, simulation, and requirements development for satellite communications architectures and advanced lunar and Martian mission concepts.

Outside of his technical work, Nicholas serves as a co-chair for the Space Exploration Project Group with the Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC), the Business Development Manager for AstroAccess, and a member of OSMED. His interests include accessible spaceflight, astronaut performance and safety, STEM outreach and education, and the future of sustained human presence on the Moon and Mars. He also enjoys rowing, softball, cooking, comedy, and being a corgi dog dad.

As a former participant in the L’SPACE Mission Concept Academy and Lead Engineer for his Summer 2020 MCA team, Nicholas credits the program with significantly shaping his technical and professional development. Through MCA, he strengthened skills in systems engineering, mission architecture development, technical communication, interdisciplinary teamwork, and presenting complex mission concepts to technical audiences. Now serving as a Bioastronautics mentor, he is excited to help students develop both technically and professionally while navigating their own pathways into the aerospace industry.