By Joey Roulette
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday tapped Jared Isaacman to lead NASA, selecting a billionaire private astronaut and close associate of Elon Musk to oversee an agency closely linked to the SpaceX founder's business.
Isaacman, CEO of payment processing company Shift4 Payments, has flown to space twice in missions arranged by his Polaris (NYSE:PII) program, an effort using SpaceX vehicles and the company's spacesuits to conduct fully private flights in Earth orbit.
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 four-year 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.
Trump's pick for NASA came months earlier than past presidential transitions as Musk, SpaceX's CEO and founder, has used his close proximity to the president-elect to discuss missions to Mars and other space exploration matters that could boost SpaceX. Trump attended SpaceX's sixth Starship test launch in Texas last month.
Isaacman, 41, is expected to double down on the agency's strategy to rely on private companies for accessing space, a growing trend at NASA in the past decade that has posed an existential threat to its Space Launch System rocket, an massive, over-budget launch vehicle built by Boeing (NYSE:BA) and Northrop Grumman (NYSE:NOC).
Isaacman would also command the agency's aeronautics portfolio, which has been funding green aviation concepts, and a sprawling space science unit that has faced layoffs and budget cuts under Democratic President Joe Biden's NASA as it prioritizes the Artemis program.
NASA's last two appointed administrators were former politicians. Trump's first NASA chief, former Oklahoma congressman Jim Bridenstine, launched the Artemis program and persuaded Congress to increase the agency's budget to fund it. Biden appointed former U.S. Senator Bill Nelson of Florida to run NASA.