Enzo Abitino

Enzo Abitino is the integration lead of Orion Production Operations Safety and Mission Assurance for the Orion Program within the Safety and Mission Assurance (SMA) directorate at NASA’s Kennedy Space in Florida, a position he has held since April 2023.  

In this role, he leads the overall SMA integration function for the Orion Program production activities before turning the Orion spacecraft over to the Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) program at Kennedy for launch processing. Abitino helps to ensure that safety and quality assurance practices and procedures are established and implemented for the overall safety of flight crew and ground personnel and mission success. Abitino also serves as a program liaison between Orion SMA and EGS SMA once the Orion spacecraft is turned over to EGS. 

Experience

Prior to his current assignment, Abitino served briefly as SMA mission assurance manager for the agency’s Artemis I mission before serving on the Consolidated Operations, Management, Engineering, and Test Source Evaluation Board as an SMA subject matter expert and representative in 2021. 

In 2018, Abitino served as the EGS System Safety Engineering lead. His responsibilities included mentoring, serving as the Integrated Engineering Review Board SMA representative, and leading the effort to work with subsystem safety engineers to successfully close all hazard report verifications for the Artemis I SMA team.  

Prior to that position, in 2016 Abitino accepted an assignment as the Ascent Abort-2 SMA lead. In this role, he led an SMA team to provide necessary information to the U.S. Air Force to help provide mission success assurance. 

Abitino first joined NASA as a safety engineer intern under the agency’s Pathways Internship Program with the International Space Station SMA group in 2011 before transitioning in 2012 to the EGS SMA group. In that role he worked on Advanced Exploration Systems research and technology projects assessing and developing safety analyses, identifying safety hazards, and communicating risk to the project managers.

Abitino also previously worked for United Space Alliance as a system engineer in the Main Propulsion Systems and Space Shuttle Main Engines group at Kennedy. 

Education

Abitino graduated from the University of Central Florida with a Bachelor of Science in civil engineering and a Bachelor of Science in environmental engineering. 

Awards

Abitino received the Space Flight Awareness Silver Snoopy Award in 2018. 

Personal

Having grown up in New York, Enzo moved to Florida in 2005 and now lives in Orlando with his wife Jessica, son Luca, and daughter Ella. He enjoys spending time with his family, visiting theme parks, watching and playing sports, cooking, and reading.  

Biography last updated April 2024