Jared Isaacman is confirmed as NASA chief, a year later : NPR
Jared Isaacman testifies during his confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in early December.
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The confirmation of billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman as head of NASA closes a turbulent chapter that began more than a year ago.
The Senate voted 67-30 Wednesday to confirm Isaacman along bipartisan lines. The 30 senators who voted against him were all Democrats.
The 42-year-old e-commerce mogul has been to space twice on private missions – both in partnership with Elon Musk’s SpaceX – and in 2024 became the first civilian to walk in space. Isaacman has no experience in the federal government.
Isaacman was among President Trump’s first choices for his second administration: Trump announced his nomination in December 2024, well before his inauguration, and made it official after taking office in January.
“Jared’s passion for space, his experience as an astronaut, uncovering the mysteries of the universe, and advancing the new space economy make him ideal to lead NASA into a bold new era,” Trump wrote on Truth Social at the time.
Isaacman made it all the way to a three-hour hearing before a Senate subcommittee in April, during which he downplayed his ties to Musk but refused to answer when asked if Musk was in the room when Trump offered him the role. Isaacman also expressed support for missions to the Moon and Mars, saying he believed NASA had the budget to achieve both.
As NASA focuses on its Artemis mission to return Americans to the Moon for the first time since the early 1970s, the second Trump administration is worrying some with its apparent preoccupation with Mars exploration — a riskier and more controversial concept that just so happens to be a longtime dream of former Trump ally Musk.
But Isaacman didn’t get a chance to answer questions about it in front of the full Senate because Trump withdrew his nomination in late May — the same week Musk left his role in the administration.
Trump said the decision followed a “thorough review” of Isaacman’s “prior associations,” and then explicitly blamed his donations on Democratic causes. Public records show Isaacman has contributed to candidates and political action committees in both parties over the years, but since 2016 he has supported more Democrats.
Isaacman described himself as “relatively apolitical” and a “right-wing moderate,” and noted that his campaign donations were public long before Trump nominated him — suggesting that was not the only reason for the change of heart. In June, Isaacman said being considered to lead NASA was “truly the honor of his life.”
“Even knowing the outcome, I would do it again,” Isaacman wrote in a letter to investors.
And that’s what finally happened: only the second time, it worked.
Isaacman takes helm in turbulent times for NASA
In early November, Trump nominated Isaacman again, without acknowledging the turmoil that had occurred along the way.
During his confirmation hearing in early December, Isaacman once again denied that his ties to Musk constituted a conflict of interest. The candidate explained that his spaceflights were operated by SpaceX because the company was the only option for sending Americans into space since NASA abandoned its space shuttle program in 2011.
“In this regard, my relationship [to Musk] is no different from NASA,” he said, adding that “there are no photos of us at dinner, in a bar, on a plane or on a yacht because they don’t exist.”
Isaacman takes the helm of an agency grappling with a lack of ongoing leadership, staff reductions, competitive pressure (especially from China), and significant funding reductions – with threats of more to come.
The administration’s 2026 budget proposes a historic 24% cut to NASA’s overall funding, which would reduce its workforce by about a third and mean the end of 41 science projects.
In recent months, protesters have descended on the Capitol to lobby against proposed budget cuts. Among them was beloved “Science Guy” Bill Nye, CEO of the nonprofit Planetary Society, who also attended Isaacman’s hearing in December to show his support for the candidate. The House and Senate both reject the deepest proposed cuts, but differ on how much funding they think the science budget should receive.
A 62-page draft agenda titled “Project Athena,” which Isaacman defended after his May escape, offers clues about how Isaacman seeks to run NASA: first and foremost, more like a business.
His priorities include a reorganization “aimed at reducing layers of bureaucracy,” sending more astronauts into space more often, taking a bigger role in certifying commercial space missions, and partnering with industries like biotechnology and pharmaceuticals to “figure out how to extract more value from space than we put into it.”
Jared Isaacman – pictured before leading the first all-civilian spaceflight in 2021 – has worked closely with Elon Musk’s SpaceX company.
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Isaacman’s background is in e-commerce and private spaceflight
Isaacman traces his interest in space to his childhood, when he was inspired by a picture book in his school library.
“I told my kindergarten teacher that I was going to go to space one day,” he recalled in 2021.
But first, he succeeded as an entrepreneur. He founded the payment processing company now known as Shift4 Payments as a teenager in his parents’ basement in New Jersey in 1991. The company, which went public in 2020, claims to process payments for one in three restaurants and 40% of hotels in the United States.
Isaacman dropped out of high school to pursue business, but later earned his GED and a bachelor’s degree in aeronautics from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. He is a licensed pilot with more than 7,000 flight hours, according to his Polaris biography.
He also co-founded a civilian aerobatic demonstration team called the Black Diamond Jet Team, as well as Draken International, which supplies tactical fighter aircraft to customers including the military and defense industries. He sold a majority stake to investment firm Blackstone Group in 2019 for a reported nine-figure sum.
Forbes puts Isaacman’s current net worth at $1.2 billion. This fortune has allowed him to pursue his astronaut ambitions and support STEM-related causes (he and his wife have pledged to donate the majority of their wealth to charity).
Isaacman financed and commanded the first all-civilian orbital flight in 2021 – which raised more than $240 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital – as well as the 2024 Polaris Dawn mission, during which he and teammate Sarah Gillis became the first civilians to perform a spacewalk.
Upon his return, Isaacman told NPR All things considered that although Earth looked beautiful from a distance, “looking into the darkness of space one had the very unwelcoming feeling that it was a threatening environment for humans.”
“We certainly didn’t evolve to be here, and if we want to be here, we’re going to have to work very hard to open this final frontier,” he added. “That was kind of one of the main takeaways.”
