We Are Cortex | Pablo Sobron

If you can’t go there, chances are Pablo Sobron has built (or is building) something that can. How about Mars? Have you been there? Or the moon? Inside a volcano? The bone-crunching depths of the oceans? Been there?

Sobron has. Or, by way of the Cortex-based company Sobron founded, he’s going there. Impossible Sensing builds tools that carry the eyes of scientists into the most inhospitable realms imaginable. And his goal?

“We're on that mission of putting eyes everywhere so we can really speed up reaching our climate goals by decades,” Sobron said. “That's in a nutshell what I'm doing. I take us to the moon and cool the Earth.”

And while it sounds fantastical, Sobron speaks without a hint of irony about humankind’s urgent need to monitor the effect of aerosols being injected into the atmosphere, how carbon is captured in the air, atmospheric methane emissions, coral reef restoration, the impact of desalination plants — and even the newest farming methods.

Using his background as a NASA engineer, Sobron and his team work with an all-star list of partners (think NASA, the SETI Institute and the U.S. Department of Energy) to build scientific equipment that can monitor, sense and learn on the fly what’s important about the data it’s capturing.

“Impossible Sensing is on this journey to speed up placing of all these eyes everywhere from the depths of the ocean to volcanoes to Antarctica, the Arctic, into orbit, the asteroid belt — everywhere,” Sobron said. Through its technology, the company is also advancing progress toward a space economy that can mine, process and use resources that already exist beyond our world.

But why in St. Louis? Sobron acknowledges the lost memory of the U.S. space program’s earliest days, when spacecraft and technology for the Mercury and Gemini missions were built right here. “It's no joke to say that, sure, St. Louis was the Gateway to the West,” Sobron said. “But it was also the gateway to space.”

But it’s not all rockets and submarines for Sobron and his company. He also works with scientists right on terra firma to create technology such as soil sensors that measure nutrient levels, soil health, water conditions and more in real time. Field tests of the technology started in Wright City in August 2024 — about a month before Impossible Sensing moved into Cortex.

Sobron said that move was a huge benefit to his company after bouncing from locations in downtown to south city. “It’s the definition of what turnkey means,” he said. “You show up in your lab, in your office, and everything works. Guaranteed. Twenty-four-seven. Every day of the year, rain or shine or snow. You can really focus on your work.”

Sobron jokes about another major benefit of being among a dedicated community of innovators. The actual rocket scientist says, “I’m the least smart person around.” 

“I've had coffee and beers with fellow entrepreneurs. We don't talk details,” he said. “But we do talk the same language of, ‘How do we get people excited about this? How do we really help the world get to a better place?”

We Are Cortex celebrates the individuals who power our vibrant district.