The FIU alumna protecting missions to Mars

NASA’S ESCAPADE spacecraft have successfully made it to space. On November 13, 2025, they launched aboard Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Their next stop: Mars.

Taking real-time measurements from two different locations at the same time, the spacecraft will show how the red planet reacts to space weather and blasts of solar winds — data critical to informing future robotic and human missions that can withstand Mars’ harsh conditions.

Alumna Denisse Aranda ’10 played a critical role in making this mission possible.

A principal space systems contamination control engineer at Blue Origin, Aranda is a Level 5 engineer — a distinction earned by fewer than 5% of the company’s engineers. Aranda leads the team responsible for keeping the New Glenn rocket and the cargo it carries as clean as they must be before, during and after liftoff. She oversees the end-to-end cleanliness plan for the rocket’s architecture and all associated flight hardware.

“The stuff we worry about is microscopic,” says Aranda, who graduated from FIU with her bachelor’s in mechanical and materials engineering.

“If there is just a little bit of debris from the tanks, it could affect everything. I look at ways we clean anything that could cause contamination, how to quantify it, model it and predict it. When you’re talking about systems that are so complex and precise like our rocket engines, even small quantities of tiny particulates at high speeds and extreme temperatures can make all the difference.”

Each mission requires a different level of cleanliness. Some payloads, especially those with optics such as star trackers or telescopes, like the James Webb telescope and deep-space observatories, tolerate almost no contamination. Even a thin layer of dust can scatter or block light, distorting measurements scientists rely on and potentially compromising years of work.

Microscopic particles can also change the course of an entire mission. For example, bad optical data, caused by contamination, can push a lunar lander outside a safe descent path and potentially crash land.

As part of contamination control, Aranda also oversees planetary protection measures — an area she considers one of the most fascinating parts of her job. Planetary protection involves making sure that microbes from Earth and space don’t cross-contaminate.

“We are protecting the planets and moon in our Solar System,” Aranda explains. “Essentially, we don’t want to get our Earth microbes, DNA and germs, and deposit them on other planets. That would be really problematic for the search of life in the universe.”

If spacecraft later gather samples of a planet’s microbes and discover Earth-like microbes, it could mistakenly lead scientists to believe that there are signs of life on other planets, when in reality it’s a contamination problem from an earlier mission.

Likewise, germs from other planets could impact the Earth’s ecosystem upon the spacecraft’s return if not properly cleaned.

Aranda is one of the engineers working to make sure Earth and other planets remain safe from this kind of contamination. Aranda’s journey started at FIU, where she says her mentors and hands-on research opportunities shaped her path. She credits mentor Leonel Lagos, of FIU’s Applied Research Center, as a major influence. As a student, she interned at NASA’s Glenn Research Center and Kennedy Space Center, as well as at the U.S. Department of Energy. After graduating, she spent nearly eight years at NASA’s Langley Research Center before joining Blue Origin where she is helping launch the next generation of space exploration.