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.
Couch was born on November 27, 1941, in Smiths Grove, Kentucky, and moved as a child with her family to Martinsville, Indiana.
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.
[2] She retired in 2003, as Langley's Associate Director for Business Management, and died on April 22, 2007.
[2] She was named a distinguished engineering alumna of Purdue University in 1994,[2] and a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1997.