NASA safety engineer Paula Ortiz Couder designs emergency cages and tackles lunar dust challenges

Paula Ortiz Couder grew up in a Madrid suburb with a lineage of elite tennis athletes, but at age twelve she declared her intention to study aerospace engineering, a goal she pursued on a tennis scholarship at Embry-Riddle in the United States. After witnessing a NASA launch in Titusville, she was inspired to join the agency, first as a contractor in 2019 and then as a full-time employee in 2024, where she contributed to the design of the white-metal evacuation cages that descended from the Artemis 2 rocket to protect the crew in an emergency.

As a crewed-mission safety specialist in NASA’s Office of Safety and Mission Assurance, she now oversees the mitigation of lunar regolith—sharp, charged dust that clings to surfaces and poses respiratory risks similar to silicosis. The challenge is central to NASA’s goal of landing Artemis 4 astronauts at the Moon’s south pole as early as 2028 and eventually establishing a permanent settlement, a program led by fellow Madrid native Carlos García Galán and supported by the U.S. Department of Defense’s nuclear power plans. Ortiz also contributed to recovery devices for Orion’s splashdown and continues to balance engineering rigor with the agency’s “yes, if…” safety philosophy.