David Leverington has held a number of senior positions in the space industry, working for both the European Space Agency and British Aerospace. He is a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and author of A History of Astronomy from 1890 to the Present (1996), New Cosmic Horizons: Space Astronomy from the V2 to the Hubble Space Telescope (2000) and Babylon to Voyager: A History of Planetary Astronomy (2003).