Kathy Lueders becomes the first ever female Director of Human Explorations at NASA

Kathyrn Lueders started her work for NASA in 1992. After almost three decades of contributions to NASA, Kathy Lueders has become the first women to head the Human Exploration & Operations Mission Directorate. Kathryn Lueders successfully oversaw the May 30, SpaceX launch, which was the first-ever commercial take-off from NASA’s Florida launch station, the Kennedy Space Center.

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Kathy Lueders promoted after NASA, SpaceX launch 

Kathryn Lueders’ promotion was announced by the NASA head administrator Jim Bridenstine on Twitter. Kathryn has been overseeing several programmes including the exhaustive testings for SpaceX, Boeing and more such giant projects. The current programs of commercial NASA space flight partnership was developed a decade ago under then-president Barack Obama. The change invited many innovations under testing phases to launch commercial flights into space, as per reports.

Kathy Lueders is now the first female Human Exploration & Operations Mission Directorate as per Jim Bridenstine

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Kathy Lueders' future duties 

Kathryn Lueders henceforth will be working on launching the first woman into space, in a future plan to the moon by 2024. For this purpose research and testing will happen with SLS rockets and Orion capsules. NASA is still deciding on which company will be making the moon landing equipment. Kathryn Leuders and many are working to achieve the feat.

Who is Kathy Lueders? 

Kathryn Lueders has the designation of program manager for NASA’s Commerical Crew Program. While essaying the role, she has to overlook the relationship, roles of private and commercial companies to fly commercial spacecraft into the low-Earth orbit and later develop technologies to launch passenger and crew flights into International Space Station (ISS). According to the official website of NASA, Kathryn Leuders looked at the program which helps commercial development and certification for secure transportation of NASA astronauts. Kathryn Lueders has acted as the 5-month program manager after serving as the deputy program manager.

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Kathy Lueders’ office is headquartered out of Kennedy Space Center in Florida and has sub-offices in field centres of NASA like the Johnson Space Center based out of Houston, as per the official website of NASA. Lueders has also served as ISS Program’s Transportation Integration Manager before being bumped up to the deputy manager’s post. During the time, she was in charge of all the commercial cargo supply and international partner vehicles. She dealt with international space organisations such as the Russian Soyuz and Progress spacecraft. Japanese Space Agency's H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) and the European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV).

Kathy Lueders' NASA career kicked off in 1992. She started out at the White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico. Her task was to oversee and manage the Shuttle Orbital Maneuvering System and Reaction Control Systems Depot. She later moved to ISS and served in different departments namely ISS Logistics and Maintenance, Vehicle Systems Integration and Commercial Orbital Transportation Services Integration. All were managerial positions at the organisation.

According to the official website of NASA, Kathy Lueders has a Bachelors in Business Administration in Finance. She acquired it from the University of New Mexico. She also studied the Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in industrial engineering. The location for the studies was New Mexico State University.

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