Nicholas Houghton, right, supports crew suit-up operations during Underway Recovery Training 12, an end-to-end practice recovery run conducted at sea to prepare for Artemis II. Sumer Loggins Johnson Space Center Office of Communications May 11, 2026 Nicholas Houghton always dreamed of working at NASA and one day becoming an astronaut. Today, he helps design systems that keep crews safe during missions aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft, including the successful Artemis II mission around the Moon. Nicholas Houghton Orion Crew Survival Systems Engineer After joining NASA as a Pathways intern, Houghton later became a full-time engineer on the Orion Crew Survival Systems (OCSS) team at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The OCSS team designs and certifies the orange pressure suits that were worn by astronauts inside Orion during Artemis II, along with the survival hardware integrated into each suit system.   Houghton manages key pieces of flight hardware that…