Kathy Lueders facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Kathryn Lueders
|
|
|---|---|
Kathryn (Kathy) Lueders NASA Portrait (2014)
|
|
| Nationality | American |
| Education | B.S. Business Administration in Finance B.S. and M.S. Industrial engineering |
| Alma mater |
|
| Employer | SpaceX |
| Title | General manager at Starbase |
Kathryn Lueders (say "Looders") is an American engineer and manager. She became a very important leader at NASA, in charge of sending people into space. She was the first woman to lead NASA's human spaceflight program. Kathy also managed NASA's Commercial Crew Program, which helped bring human spaceflight back to the United States. Today, she works at SpaceX as the General Manager at Starbase.
Early Life and Education
Kathy Lueders grew up in Japan. Her family lived in Tokyo when the Apollo 11 mission landed on the Moon in 1969. She remembers her dad waking everyone up to watch this amazing event. As a child, she enjoyed reading books by Isaac Asimov, a famous science fiction writer.
When she first went to college, Kathy studied business. She thought she might work in finance, perhaps on Wall Street, which is a center for money and business. However, during her last year, she became interested in engineering after seeing her roommate study it. She realized that engineering gave her "tools to solve problems and work on something bigger."
Kathy earned her first degree in Business Administration in finance from the University of New Mexico in 1986. Later, she went back to school and earned two more degrees in industrial engineering from New Mexico State University. She got her Bachelor of Science in 1993 and her Master of Science in 1999.
Career Journey
Working at NASA
Kathy Lueders started her career at NASA in 1992. She began as a "co-op," which is like an internship, while she was still a student. She worked as a quality engineer at the White Sands Test Facility, making sure things were safe and worked correctly. She was one of the first women to work at that facility.
After finishing her studies, Kathy became a manager for parts of the Space Shuttle program. She also held several management jobs for the International Space Station Program at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
She also managed the delivery of supplies to the space station using commercial (private) companies. She was in charge of how NASA worked with spacecraft from other countries, like Europe, Japan, and Russia, when they visited the space station. In 2013, she moved to Kennedy Space Center to help lead the Commercial Crew Program (CCP). She officially became the head of this program in 2014. This program was NASA's first time working with private companies to send astronauts into space. Kathy used her experience to help set up and manage the CCP.
.jpg)
Kathy managed a NASA team that worked closely with SpaceX and Boeing for seven years. She was the CCP manager when SpaceX launched the Crew Dragon Demo-2 mission on May 30, 2020. This was a huge moment because it was the first time astronauts launched from U.S. soil since the Space Shuttle retired in 2011. After the launch, she said she was "so grateful and proud of our NASA and SpaceX team."
On June 12, 2020, NASA announced that Kathy Lueders would become the new leader for all of NASA's human space exploration efforts. Her husband pointed out that she would be the first woman to hold this important position.
Kathy believes that "exploration is a team sport." She enjoys solving challenging problems with her team. She says that working at NASA allows her to cooperate peacefully with other countries that explore space. In April 2023, Kathy announced she would retire from NASA.
Joining SpaceX
Just a few weeks after leaving NASA, it was announced on May 15, 2023, that Kathy Lueders would join SpaceX. She became a general manager working on the Starship program at Starbase. She reports directly to Gwynne Shotwell, the president and chief operating officer of SpaceX.
Personal Life
After getting married and having two children, Kathy Lueders decided to go back to college to study engineering.
