Posted: Sat, Dec 7, 2024, 10:07 AM ET (1507 GMT)
President-elect Trump announced Wednesday his intent to nominate Jared Isaacman, a billionaire and private astronaut, as NASA administrator. Isaacman is the CEO of payment processing company Shift4 and commanded two private astronaut missions on SpaceX's Crew Dragon, Inspiration4 in 2021 and Polaris Dawn in September. On the latter mission he conducted the first private spacewalk. Isaacman said that as head of NASA he will "passionately pursue" possibilites enabled by new commercial capabilities in space. Many in the space industry welcomed his nomination, although some raised concerns about his close ties to SpaceX and its CEO, Elon Musk. Isaacman has previously been critical of defense contracting approaches, calling for measures such as canceling or renegotiating contracts and even recommending to "break up the largest primes" to improve overall performance.

Related Links:

•  SpaceNews article
•  New York Times article
•  AP article
•  Ars Technica article
•  Washington Post article