Kathy Lueders quietly made history at NASA — now she’s retiring

NASA recently announced that Kathy Lueders, a long-serving engineer and manager for the space agency, will retire effective May 1. Lueders leaves NASA with a long list of accomplishments, not the least of which was seeing the Commercial Crew program to a successful launch as manager of that program. She subsequently served as associate administrator of the Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) Mission Directorate and then associate administrator of the Space Operations Missions Directorate when HEO was split into separate exploration and operations organizations.

The Commercial Crew program, which started as part of the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program under President George W. Bush, operates on a fixed-price basis, unlike most major NASA programs. Companies bid on contracts to take astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS) without the expectation that NASA will cover any cost overruns. In return, the winning companies can sell space transportation services to private customers. SpaceX, with its Crew Dragon, and Boeing, with its Starliner, won the Commercial Crew contracts.

During the Obama presidency, Commercial Crew suffered both in Congress and at NASA because of the association, in many minds, with President Obama’s decision to cancel President George W. Bush’s Constellation moon/Mars program. It encountered a great deal of opposition from then Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), who served on the Senate Commerce Committee that oversees NASA’s budget. Ironically, as the current NASA administrator, Nelson has become one of Commercial Crew’s warmest supporters.

Lueders became acting manager of the Commercial Crew Program in 2013 and then full manager the following year. Through her quiet efforts, the first human beings to launch from American soil since the space shuttle’s retirement in 2011 traveled to the International Space Station on May 30, 2020, aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon. Since then, the Crew Dragon has made a number of flights, both for NASA and private customers, proving the Commercial Crew concept. The Boeing Starliner is scheduled to take astronauts into space as soon as late July 2023.

Not coincidentally, Jim Bridenstine, a former member of Congress, became NASA administrator two years before after a contentious confirmation process. Bridenstine sold both Commercial Crew and the new deep space exploration program, dubbed Artemis, to both NASA and Congress. Along with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who brought in Crew Dragon on a reasonable budget and schedule, Lueders and Bridenstine are most responsible for the success of Commercial Crew.

Within a month of the first crewed flight of the Crew Dragon, then-administrator Bridenstine appointed Lueders as associate administrator of the Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) Mission Directorate. She had charge of all of NASA’s human spaceflight activities, including Commercial Crew, the International Space Station and the Artemis Program.

Lueders had a considerable challenge. Artemis had just been rocked by the revelation that her predecessor, Doug Loverro, was being investigated for potential violation of the Procurement Integrity Act by secretly preferring Boeing for a lunar lander contract. Artemis was also tasked with landing humans on the moon by 2024, a goal that has subsequently been delayed at least a year.

Then in 2021, with a new president and a new NASA administrator, the space agency split HEO into separate exploration and operations directorates. Lueders took charge of the operations directorate, which included commercial crew and the ISS, a move that many thought at the time a demotion. However, a few months later, the Russian invasion of Ukraine shook the partnership that sustained the ISS to its core. The partnership has held, but barely.

Lueders recalls how her father woke her up to watch the Apollo 11 moon landing, while living with her family in Japan. “And I — and, you know, at the time, I was five. And so — you know, but it’s always been this kind of distant memory of seeing people on TV standing on the moon. That’s just amazing.”

Lueders earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration at the University of New Mexico and then a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in industrial engineering at New Mexico State University. She joined NASA in 1992 and started a lengthy career in which she quietly made history.

The next chapter of Lueders’ story, whether it will be in private industry, academia or some other area, is yet to be written. Perhaps she will write her memoirs. Such an account would cast light on an important time of space history and provide insights into the challenges of managing some of the most difficult undertakings that humankind has ever accomplished.

Mark R. Whittington is the author of space exploration studies “Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon?” as well as “The Moon, Mars and Beyond,” and “Why is America Going Back to the Moon?” He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner.