NASA Veteran Kathy Lueders Joins Vast as Advisor

Vast, announces today the appointment of Kathy Lueders as its newest Advisor. Lueders’ career spans over three decades working at NASA and SpaceX. She now serves as Vice Chair of the Texas Space Commission, and is a globally recognized leader in the space community, within industry and government alike.  

In her role as Vast Advisor, Lueders will provide guidance and counsel on Vast’s participation in the NASA Commercial Low Earth Orbit Destinations program (CLD) and the company’s bid to build a successor to the International Space Station (ISS), Haven-2, which will ensure a continuous human presence in space.

Prior to her current role, Lueders was SpaceX’s Starbase General Manager overseeing the transformation of the site from a tech outpost to the current growing city of Starbase. Lueders joined SpaceX after thirty years with NASA, serving in various human spaceflight leadership roles including overseeing human space flight operations as the first female associate administrator for both the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, and the Space Operations directorate. Lueders was the manager of the Commercial Crew Program that returned human spaceflight back to US soil in 2020. She also oversaw the ISS Transportation Integration strategies including the implementation of the Commercial Resupply strategy which has delivered almost a million pounds of cargo to the ISS.

“It’s an honor to have Kathy Lueders join Vast as an Advisor. She is responsible for many human spaceflight ‘firsts’, including championing a new way of doing business in low Earth orbit,” shared Max Haot, CEO of Vast. “Kathy helped pioneer NASA’s public-private commercial model and will be a strong asset to Vast’s already strong position in the CLD competition.” 

“It was a natural choice to work with Vast given their hardware-rich approach and proven technologies like Haven Demo that are accelerating their design and development of Haven-2 which will enable continuous human presence in low-Earth orbit for the U.S. and its allies,” added Lueders. “The transition from the ISS to a commercial platform will be a historic moment in spacelight and I value the opportunity to contribute to it.” 

To see Vast’s full Advisor team, visit: https://www.vastspace.com/team ‍

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About Vast

Vast is developing next-generation space stations to ensure continuous human presence in space for America and its allies, enabling advanced microgravity research and manufacturing, and unlocking a new space economy for government, corporate, and private customers. Using an incremental, hardware-rich and low-cost approach, Vast is rapidly developing its multi-module Haven Station. Haven Demo’s 2025 success made Vast the only operational commercial space station company to fly and operate its own spacecraft. Next, Haven-1 is expected to become the world’s first commercial space station when it launches in 2026, followed by additional Haven modules to enable permanent human presence by 2030.

With more than 1,000 employees at its Long Beach, California headquarters and over a billion dollars in private capital invested, Vast has built the facilities required to manufacture and operate America’s next space station. The company plans to develop future habitats for the Moon and Mars, dedicated space stations for government partners, and other crewed systems that will unlock the expanding long-term space economy.