U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday tapped Jared Isaacman to lead the U.S. space agency, NASA, selecting a billionaire private astronaut and close associate of Elon Musk to oversee an agency closely linked to the SpaceX founder's businesses.
Isaacman, 41, CEO of payment processing company Shift4 Payments, leads Polaris, a program that uses SpaceX spacecraft for private missions in space.
The private spacewalk of billionaire Jared Isaacman
(Video: SpaceX)
If confirmed, he would oversee the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's roughly $25 billion budget heavily focused on returning humans to the moon under its Artemis program, a multibillion dollar effort promoted by Trump during his first term that will rely heavily on SpaceX's Starship.
"Jared will drive NASA's mission of discovery and inspiration, paving the way for groundbreaking achievements in Space science, technology, and exploration," Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform.
Isaacman is a billionaire and pilot, who financed his own missions into space. He was the commander of the Inspiration4 mission in 2021, the first mission involving only private astronauts. In September, he went on another mission, which he also commanded. He became the first private astronaut to go on a spacewalk. In both missions he flew into space in SpaceX ships, owned by Elon Musk.
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He would also command the space agency's aeronautics portfolio that has been funding green aviation concepts, as well as a sprawling space science unit that has faced layoffs and budget cuts under the administration of President Joe Biden.
Isaacman, who is Jewish, and who dropped out of school at the age of 16 in order to start a business from the basement of his parents' house, is a fighter pilot and owns the largest fleet of private fighter jets in the world.