Elon Musk's SpaceX has tapped NASA's former human spaceflight boss Kathy Lueders to help oversee development of the company's moon and Mars rocket called Starship, a person familiar with the hire said on Monday.
Lueders, the second former NASA human spaceflight chief to retire and move to SpaceX in recent years, represents another key hire for the company as it races to develop and use Starship for landing NASA astronauts on the moon within the next decade.
Lueders spent 31 years at NASA and retired in April. In 2021, she was the NASA source selection official who picked SpaceX's Starship rocket for a $3 billion Artemis contract to land the first U.S. astronauts on the moon since 1972. Private moon landers from other companies are to be picked in a later contract program.
As the head of NASA's human spaceflight wing, Lueders oversaw development of SpaceX's Crew Dragon, the company's flagship cargo and astronaut taxi that has become the agency's primary ride to and from the International Space Station.
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