Donald Trump has reinstated his nomination of billionaire private astronaut Jared Isaacman to serve as the new head of NASA, pledging that he will lead the agency “into a bold new era” of space exploration.
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Isaacman, an ally of SpaceX founder Elon Musk, was initially nominated by the US president earlier this year. However, the appointment was abruptly withdrawn amid scrutiny over Isaacman’s previous political donations to the Democratic Party. In a surprise reversal, Mr Trump has now declared that Isaacman is the ideal candidate after all.
“Jared’s passion for space, his astronaut experience, and his commitment to pushing the boundaries of exploration and expanding the new space economy make him perfectly suited to lead NASA into a bold new era,” the president wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social. A former chief executive of the payment processing firm Shift4, Isaacman has twice travelled into orbit on privately funded missions with SpaceX and became the first private citizen to conduct a spacewalk last year.
While Isaacman enjoys considerable support within the US space industry, his nomination remains divisive within Republican ranks and will require confirmation in a Senate hearing. Despite his previous rejection, Isaacman expressed gratitude for the renewed opportunity.
“Thank you, Mr President @POTUS, for this opportunity. It will be an honour to serve my country under your leadership,” he posted on X (formerly Twitter). “The support from the space-loving community has been overwhelming. I am not sure how I earned the trust of so many, but I will do everything I can to live up to those expectations.”
If confirmed, Isaacman will face the formidable task of reviving the United States’ space ambitions and regaining momentum in the race with China to return astronauts to the Moon. The Artemis programme—NASA’s flagship lunar mission—has been plagued by delays, caused partly by issues with the Orion spacecraft that will carry astronauts to lunar orbit and, more significantly, by setbacks with SpaceX’s Starship rocket, which has yet to achieve stable Earth orbit.
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Sean Duffy, NASA’s interim chief and a former reality television personality, recently criticised the slow progress of Starship’s development and indicated that he might reopen the lunar lander contract to competitors.
Musk fired back on X, writing: “The person responsible for America’s space programme can’t have a two-digit IQ.”
Isaacman has voiced his support for the Artemis initiative but has not clarified his stance on NASA’s in-house Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, due to make its first crewed test flight around the Moon next year.
He has said his goal is to see “more astronauts in space with greater frequency” and has suggested that commercial firms could take on a larger share of NASA’s activities, allowing the agency to refocus on “the near-impossible—projects that no one else will tackle, such as nuclear electric propulsion.”
