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About Charlotte Pouwels

Charlotte Pouwels is a dutch physicist with a specialization in space radiation and plasma thrusters for CubeSats (Australia). She has a wide experience and background in research about future habitats on extra-terrestrial bodies and space exploration. 

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Charlotte has a lot of passion, discipline and motivation for space, humanity and life on Earth itself. She is an advanced wreck diver and likes to boulder, travel, play chess and ride a motorcycle.

In 2019 she became an analogue astronaut for the ESA EuroMoonMars IMA ILWEG EMMIHS-II mission at HI-SEAS (Hawai'i, America). She worked among others for the project Food for Mars and Moon and the reactor institute in Delft (RID), focussing on the Martian radiation influences on plants that grow on Mars simulant soil. 

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In 2019 she also became a STEM promoter and educator to inspire the next generation to go beyond their limits. In addition, she and a team from EuroMoonMars have launched the CHILL-ICE project "Construction of a Habitat Inside a Lunar-analogue Lava tube - ICeland EuroMoonMars". Where they focus on an emergency situation on the Moon, where astronauts need to set up a deployable habitat inside a Lava Tube within an 8 hour EVA. 

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In 2020 she started working for Airbus Defence & Space in the Netherlands as a test engineer for the Newspace project Sparkwing. Developing off the shelf solar panels for smallsats, which reduces costs and delivery times drastically and opens up a window for the commercial space sector. Her role consisted of performing different mechanical and environmental testing alongside with experts in the space sector. 

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Currently, she is attending the Summer Space program 2021 and pursuing an MSc in space sciences at the International Space University, while working as a researcher at Airbus DS and Analogue mission organizer at EuroMoonMars.