Daniel graduated in aerospace engineering from the Technical University of Madrid in 2002, after an exchange for his master thesis at TU Delft. He then joined the Spain-based company GMV as a space mission analyst and worked as project engineer in the areas of orbital mechanics, formation flying, satellite constellations and reusable launch vehicles.

From 2004 he worked for over 7 years in ESA/ESOC, Germany, as a GMV contractor in the mission analysis section. At ESOC he was involved in future interplanetary missions to Mercury, Mars and Jupiter moons, as well as various small studies of Earth observation and other Solar System exploration candidate missions.

Daniel joined in 2011 the Advanced Space Concepts Laboratory of the University of Strathclyde, where he pursued and obtained a PhD in space engineering on February 2015. His doctorate research focused on the dynamics of minor bodies, and the study of novel ways of manipulating small Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs), ranging from capture to material processing.

Since he left academia, Daniel has been working as a programme officer for the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs in Vienna, with a short break at JAXA from October 2015 to March 2016 as a research fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

Daniel attended SSP07 in Beijing as a participant and has been actively involved with ISU since.