The White House said on Saturday it would name a new nominee for NASA administrator, just days before billionaire Jared Isaacman, the current pick, was to face his planned Senate confirmation vote.
“It’s essential that the next leader of NASA is in complete alignment with President Trump’s America First agenda and a replacement will be announced directly by President Trump soon,” White House spokesperson Liz Huston said.
It wasn’t immediately clear why President Donald Trump was dropping the nomination of Isaacman, who had already been approved by the Senate Commerce Committee.
Isaacman, a Democratic donor in the past, had found support across swaths of the space industry and in Congress, though some lawmakers voiced concerns over his close ties to Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Isaacman has spent an undisclosed sum of his own money on two SpaceX missions, while Shift4 Payments has provided SpaceX with $27.5 million in funding. Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet unit, is also a customer.
The White House’s about-face, which was earlier reported by Semafor, comes a day after Trump released a detailed budget plan that called for slashing NASA’s budget by about 25% from the previous year, with significant reductions to its science portfolio — cuts Isaacman has said wouldn’t be an “optimal outcome.”
Representatives for Isaacman declined to comment. Isaacman didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Isaacman is the chief executive officer of Shift4 Payments. The company processes payments for restaurants, resorts, hotels, casinos and stadiums.
During his confirmation hearing, Isaacman made the case that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration can pursue missions to both the moon and Mars “in parallel”, walking a political tightrope between the desires of Congress and the administration.
“The administrator of NASA will help lead humanity into space and execute President Trump’s bold mission of planting the American flag on the planet Mars,” Huston said.
On Friday, Trump’s budget request outlined major changes to NASA’s Artemis program to bring Americans back to the moon, including phasing out the Boeing Co.-built Space Launch System rocket and replacing it with a cheaper, commercial-led system.
Isaacman in the past had criticized SLS as too expensive and behind schedule. But when a senator questioned Isaacman about whether he would make changes to the Artemis program, he said the SLS rocket is the “best and fastest” way to get to the moon but doubted its long-term viability to take people to the moon and Mars frequently.
Isaacman had also stated that he wanted to see NASA “launch more telescopes, more probes, [and] more rovers” — which appears to run counter to Trump’s recent budget request which proposes canceling science missions and pushes for a more private-sector-led era of American space exploration.
— Loren Grush, Sana Pashankar / Bloomberg News
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(With assistance from Kate Sullivan and Ed Ludlow.)
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