President-elect Donald Trump will nominate financial technology billionaire Jared Isaacman, a longtime SpaceX astronaut, to serve as the next NASA administrator.
If confirmed, Isaacman would oversee a U.S. agency with a roughly $24.8 billion budget and a suite of human and robotic space exploration programs, including the flagship Artemis moon mission. He would replace Bill Nelson, a former U.S. senator from Florida, who has run the agency under outgoing President Joe Biden.
Isaacman’s nomination is likely to provoke concerns he will favor Elon Musk’s SpaceX when it comes to NASA policies and contracting. Isaacman has spent an undisclosed sum of his own money on two SpaceX missions, while the company he runs, Shift4 Payments, has provided SpaceX with $27.5 million in funding.
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SpaceX is one of NASA’s biggest partners and frequently bids for the agency’s contracts. Musk was quick to congratulate Isaacman in a social media post.
Trump’s announcement comes about three months after Isaacman and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis made history by performing the world’s first commercial space walk.
“Having been fortunate to see our amazing planet from space, I am passionate about America leading the most incredible adventure in human history,” Isaacman wrote in a social media post.
Isaacman is the chief executive officer of Shift4 Payments. The company processes payments for a range of restaurants, resorts, hotels, casinos and stadiums. Starlink, Musk’s satellite internet provider, is also a customer.
In a letter to employees, Isaacman wrote that he would stay on as CEO until his nomination is confirmed and plans to retain the majority of his equity interest in the company. Shares in Shift4 fell as much as 8.4% after Trump’s announcement, the most intraday since Nov. 12.
Isaacman, whose stake in Shift4 has been valued at roughly $1.7 billion, began his relationship with SpaceX in late 2020 while working to make inroads as an investor.
“Jared has demonstrated exceptional leadership, building a trailblazing global financial technology company,” Trump wrote Wednesday on his social media platform when making the announcement.
Isaacman is the latest pick seen as a positive for SpaceX. Last month, Trump nominated as Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr, who has aligned himself with Musk and at one point advocated for subsidizing Starlink in rural areas.
It’s unclear what Isaacman’s nomination means for his future with SpaceX.
His space walk mission, called Polaris Dawn, was part of a three-flight program partially funded by Isaacman to help advance human spaceflight at SpaceX. The Polaris program has two more human spaceflight missions planned, with the final mission slated to be the first crewed mission of SpaceX’s Starship rocket.
Isaacman had hinted that he could be on those future missions, but no crew announcements have yet been made. He has also proposed using the second Polaris mission to raise the orbit of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
Isaacman signaled that he’d continue his commitment to human spaceflight as the head of NASA, calling his nomination the “honor of a lifetime.”
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“There will inevitably be a thriving space economy — one that will create opportunities for countless people to live and work in space,” he said. “At NASA, we will passionately pursue these possibilities and usher in an era where humanity becomes a true spacefaring civilization.”
Isaacman also made what appeared to be a thinly veiled reference to America’s competition with China in space exploration, without mentioning the country by name. “We will never again lose our ability to journey to the stars and never settle for second place.”
Trump’s previous pick for NASA administrator in 2017, Jim Bridenstine, a Republican representative from Oklahoma prior to his nomination, faced criticism by Democrats over his lack of a science background. Biden wound up picking Nelson after Bridenstine left the agency.
“Jared’s vision for pushing boundaries, paired with his proven track record of success in private industry, positions him as an ideal candidate to lead NASA into a bold new era,” Bridenstine said in a statement.
As a government agency, NASA must adhere to procurement law when selecting its contractors, but its decisions frequently come under fire. After the agency awarded SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract in 2021 to create a vehicle to land humans on the moon, rival Blue Origin sued both NASA and then the federal government over the decision. Ultimately, Blue Origin lost its suit, but was awarded a separate contract to build a lander in 2023.
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(With assistance from Sana Pashankar.)
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