At the end of April, a long time NASA official will be stepping down from a prominent posting. Kathryn Lueders will be retiring from the agency after 31 years. Her current position of associate administrator of NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate obviously has a big role to play in the space agency’s future plans, which is why her successor has already been named. I had the chance to discuss that with her, but we started by getting to know a little bit about her past and the road she took to get where she is today.