Assistant Secretary, National Space Society
Hannah Rens is an aerospace engineer and space settlement advocate. Hannah formerly served on the NSS Board of Directors and is a member of the Space Settlement Advocacy Committee, where she has authored a literature review analyzing the scientific feasibility of space settlement. This effort covers over fifty peer reviewed papers published in a wide array of academic journals and establishes the current status of space settlement technology. Cutting edge work in fields such as radiation protection, closed ecosystems, ISRU, and construction methods is examined and compared across potential locations for space settlements throughout the solar system. The impacts of the literature published to date is discussed, and future research opportunities are outlined.
Hannah works as a systems engineer on CST-100 Starliner for Boeing, where she also worked on console as Anomaly Manager for the Crewed Flight Test. Additionally, she has worked on a Economic Research for Space Development grant from NASA’s Emerging Space Office and the AIAA Space Systems Design Competition. Hannah has a BS in Aerospace Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin, and is completing a MS in Astronautical Engineering from The University of Southern California in 2025. Since 2012, she has been a part of the International Space Settlement Design Competition family of events as a student and volunteer. She has been directly involved with NSS since 2018, when she presented in the Space Settlement and Space Minerals track at ISDC.
