'One of the most difficult jobs in America': NASA is now counting on Kathy Lueders, a 28-year space agency veteran, to land 2 astronauts on the moon in 2024

Kim Shiflett/NASA

• Under NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine, two chiefs of the agency's human spaceflight have departed within a year, including Bill Gerstenmaier and Doug Loverro.
• Last week, NASA announced Kathy Lueders — a 28-year agency veteran and leader of the program overseeing SpaceX's first crewed flight to orbit — would now lead its Human Spaceflight Office.
• Lueders is the first woman chief of the division, and she has authority over all NASA projects that involve flying astronauts to and from space.
• Her task list is epic: It includes getting new commercial spaceships to and from orbit with astronauts, landing two people on the moon in 2024, and rocketing the first crew to Mars in the mid-2030s.
• "This has got to be one of the most difficult jobs in America, but it's also going to be one of the most rewarding," Bridenstine told Lueders during a press briefing on Thursday.
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Amid the chaos of turnover at the top of NASA's human spaceflight office — the division charged with safely sending astronauts to and from space — the agency has found a toehold in the leadership of Kathy Lueders.

Since 2014, Lueders has led NASA's Commercial Crew Program: a roughly $8 billion competition that's paid SpaceX and Boeing to develop privately owned and operated spaceships. The program is designed to replace the human spaceflight capabilities the US lost when its government retired the space shuttle in July 2011.

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