Washington (AFP)
Kathy Lueders was appointed Friday to head the directorate of manned flights of NASA, one of the most important positions of the American space agency. His priority will be to keep to the difficult schedule of the Artémis program of return to the Moon.
"Kathy brings us extraordinary experience and passion, which we will need for Artemis and our goal of landing the first woman and the next man on the Moon by 2024," said Jim Bridenstine, administrator of Nasa, in a statement.
She is the first woman in the post, a spokeswoman for AFP confirmed. It has been vacant since the sudden resignation in May of Doug Loverro, who left after only six months for mysterious reasons but apparently linked to a tender.
Ms. Lueders, who joined NASA in 1992, had directed the manned commercial flight program for six years, which was a first success with the launch on May 30 by SpaceX of two astronauts to the International Space Station.
It was she who, for years, had overseen the tiresome test program, full of twists and turns, for the capsules developed by SpaceX and Boeing, another partner company, to ensure that the vessels would be safe for its precious passengers.
"This Nasa-SpaceX team has always exceeded expectations, they have worked miracles for me," she said in yet another briefing on May 29.
The program of private manned flights to the space station had been launched in the years 2010 under the presidency of Barack Obama, and represented a change of model at the time controversial for the agency which now would let two private companies design and manufacture vehicles , in exchange for fixed service contracts. Previously, NASA managed everything from design to production of rockets and spacecraft, assuming all of the costs of manufacturers, including budget overruns.
For the Moon, the program is run the old fashioned way, with a budget in the tens of billions of dollars, which has sparked a move to outsource more of the mission to private companies like SpaceX or Blue Origin, created by Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, notably for equipment deliveries.
The current schedule, set by the administration of President Donald Trump, is to land two astronauts, including at least one woman, on the Moon before the end of 2024, using the SLS heavy rocket (built by Boeing) and the capsule Orion (Lockheed Martin). But the developments are years behind, and NASA has not yet chosen the company that will manufacture the landing gear.
The successful routing of the two American astronauts to the ISS has strengthened NASA in its partnership with SpaceX, to the point that the head of the agency announced on June 8 that the contracts for the deliveries of the elements of the future lunar base would be granted according to the cost per tonne, a change welcomed by Elon Musk, the boss of the space society, who after the ISS dreams of the Moon and Mars.
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