Working at the center of human spaceflight

Ever since that first NASA internship — with grad school in between — Houghton has remained a part of the team at Johnson Space Center in Houston that designs, engineers and builds space suits and other protective equipment for crewed space missions.

“We’re a very integrated team that does everything related to life support,” he says. “We supply the suits but also the umbilicals that provide air, cooling, communication capability and more to the suit.”

Nicholas Houghton, an Orion Crew Survival System engineer, conducts training with an Orion crew survival suit aboard the USS John P. Murtha. — In preparation for the return of Artemis II’s crew to Earth, Houghton trained Navy helicopter search and rescue squadron HSC-23 and Navy divers. Photo by NASA

Beyond design, Houghton’s team provides an end-to-end suited service to the astronauts, from training them to use and work in their spacesuits to suiting them up on launch day at Kennedy Space Center and partnering with the Navy to support recovery operations as the astronauts return to Earth.

“People may think they recognize these orange suits from the Space Shuttle era,” Houghton says, but they were specifically designed for the Orion capsule and for the Artemis missions around the moon.

At NASA, it’s all about factoring in the worst-case scenarios, Houghton explains. “If something were to happen with the spacecraft on the way to the moon, the question is,: ‘How do we protect the crew?’” he says. “The suits are the answer.”

NASA engineer Nicholas Houghton leads a briefing about the Orion Crew Survival Systems. — Houghton gives a brief on the Orion Crew Survival System suit, which provided protection, air, cooling, communication capability and more to the Artemis II astronauts during their voyage to the moon. Photo by NASA

As a result, the system Houghton helped develop allows the astronauts to live, breathe and operate the spacecraft as needed for multiple days in the suit while remaining protected from injury in the event of emergency scenarios — an immense technical challenge.

Loading component...

Latest News

MSUToday Weekly Update

Connect With Us