posted 02-08-2012 08:38 AM               

The cause was complications of prostate cancer, said his son, Kirk.

During an extraordinarily varied career, Citron founded an adventure travel agency, built satellite tracking stations, produced National Geographic documentaries and monitored natural phenomena such as insect invasions and falling meteorites. He even organized a 20-member expedition to watch the Russian space station Mir reenter the Earth's atmosphere...

In 1983 he developed Spacehab, a pressurized module that fit inside the cargo bay of the space shuttle. He had envisioned it for human cargo.

NASA was opposed to carrying people in the module for safety reasons but eventually agreed to another use: Since 1993, Spacehab, which was patented by Citron and co-designer Thomas C. Taylor, has been deployed to hold scientific experiments on more than 20 space shuttle missions, including the 1998 flight of the Discovery, when Sen. John Glenn returned to space.

Citron sold the company in 1986. It is now part of Austin-based Astrotech.