Who Is Christina Koch? NASA Acting Deputy Chief Engineer
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Space Leaders
Sourced profiles of the people who run space programs: agency heads, Space Force and Space Command generals, mission and program leads, and the founders and chiefs of space companies.
Who Is Amit Kshatriya? NASA Associate Administrator
Who is Amit Kshatriya? Learn about NASA's associate administrator, chief engineer, and chief operating officer overseeing agency programs and operations.
Who these profiles cover
Space programs are run by a small number of people whose decisions set launch schedules, budgets and priorities for years. This section profiles them when they make the news: a new appointment, a nomination, a retirement, a program milestone, or a public statement about the mission they lead. Each profile answers the question readers search for first, who is this person and what are they in charge of, and then lays out their current role, earlier posts and recent news.
We cover civilian, military and commercial leaders in every country with a serious space program. On the civil side that means the heads and senior officials of NASA and its field centers, the European Space Agency, JAXA, ISRO, Roscosmos, the China National Space Administration and the China Manned Space Agency. On the military side it means the Chief of Space Operations and the generals who lead the commands and acquisition organizations of the U.S. Space Force, along with U.S. Space Command, the National Reconnaissance Office, the Space Development Agency and their counterparts abroad, including China's PLA Aerospace Force. On the commercial side it means the founders, chief executives and program heads of launch, satellite and space-station companies.
Some people in space news are left out on purpose. Astronauts flying a mission get a profile only when they also lead a program or an organization. Investors, analysts and lawmakers who comment on space policy but do not run a space agency, command or company are not covered here, and neither are people whose only space role ended years ago.
How each profile is built
Every profile starts from a news report that names the person and their role. Before anything is written, we collect the facts other published sources state about them, from news coverage and, where it exists, their Wikipedia entry, and each fact is kept only with the exact words that support it. The profile is written from those facts alone and every claim links to the source it came from. A separate check compares the finished page with the sources and removes anything they do not state. We do not publish personal details such as family, health, age or wealth.
When a person already has a profile and makes the news again, we add a dated section to the same page instead of starting a new one, so each leader has a single page that grows over time.
Where to read about the programs they run
The profiles connect to the reference pages on the organizations themselves. For the U.S. military side, start with what the Space Force does, U.S. Space Command and the Space Development Agency. For civil programs, see the U.S. space program, the Artemis program, the Chinese space program and the Indian space program. For companies, our page on Chinese commercial space companies and the launch section cover the firms these executives lead.