Lana Couch
Lana Murphy Couch (1941–2007) was an American aeronautical engineer who headed the National Aero-Space Plane program at the Langley Research Center of NASA. Early life and education Couch was born on November 27, 1941, in Smiths Grove, Kentucky, and moved as a child with her family to Martinsville, Indiana. She describes herself as a high school student as interested in mathematics, science, and science fiction. She majored in aeronautical engineering at Purdue University, graduating in 1963 as one of only two women in the major for that year. Career and later life On graduating, Couch became a research engineer at the Langley Research Center of NASA; she remained at NASA for the rest of her career, shifting between Langley and NASA's headquarters. In 1975 she became head of the Structural Tunnels Section, part of a program to develop wind tunnels to test hypersonic aircraft. She became program manager for Fluid and Thermal Physics in 1980, manager for Spacecraft Systems Technology and In-Space Technology Experiments in 1983, manager in the National Aero-Space Plane program in 1985, and acting director of the Space Research and Technology Program in 1988. In 1990 she became the director of the National Aero-Space Plane Office at