Donald Trump has relaunched his nomination of a billionaire private astronaut to be the new NASA chief and lead the space agency “into a bold new era”.
Jared Isaacman, an ally of SpaceX boss Elon Musk, was originally nominated by the US president in the spring, but the rug was pulled at the last minute over his previous donations to Democrats.
Now, in a sudden reversal, Mr Trump has decided Isaacman is, after all, the best person for the job.
“Jared’s passion for Space, astronaut experience, and dedication to pushing the boundaries of exploration, unlocking the mysteries of the universe, and unlocking the new space economy, make him ideally suited to lead NASA into a bold new era,” he wrote in a post on his social media platform Truth Social.
Isaacman, the former chief executive of the payment processing company Shift4, has twice been to space in commercially funded missions with SpaceX.
Last year he became the first private citizen to perform a spacewalk.
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Although he has wide support within the US space industry, he remains a controversial figure in Republican circles, and still needs to be approved in a Senate hearing.
Isaacman doesn’t appear to hold a grudge over his job offer being cancelled last time round.
He said on X: “Thank you, Mr President @POTUS, for this opportunity. It will be an honor to serve my country under your leadership.
“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 Isaacman is cleared to take up the job, he faces the daunting task of putting the US space programme back on track and beating China in a new space race to land astronauts on the moon.
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The Artemis programme has been seriously delayed. That’s partly because of problems with the Orion capsule that will take astronauts to and from lunar orbit, but largely because the SpaceX Starship mega-rocket that is supposed to then shuttle the crew down to the surface has struggled to even orbit Earth.
Sean Duffy, the temporary NASA chief and former reality TV star, recently criticised the tardy development of Starship and said he would reopen the contract for the lunar landing to SpaceX competitors.
Musk responded on X: “The person responsible for America’s space program can’t have a 2 digit IQ.”
Isaacman supports the Artemis mission, although his commitment is unclear to the NASA-developed SLS rocket that is due to launch on its first crewed test flight around the moon next year.
He said he wants “more astronauts in space with greater frequency” and signalled that commercial companies could increasingly take over some NASA activities while it refocused funding on “the near-impossible that no one else will work on like nuclear electric propulsion”.
