Vote on Isaacman, private astronaut and Mars missions advocate, passes 67-30 for him to be agency’s 15th leader
The US Senate on Wednesday confirmed billionaire private astronaut Jared Isaacman to become Donald Trump’s Nasa administrator. The confirmation makes an advocate of Mars missions and an ally of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk the space agency’s 15th leader.
The vote on Isaacman, who Trump nominated, removed and then renamed for the post of Nasa administrator this year, passed 67-30, two weeks after he told senators in his second hearing that Nasa must pick up the pace in beating China back to the moon this decade.
Acting Nasa chief Sean Duffy, who also leads the US transportation department, congratulated Isaacman on Twitter/X, wishing Isaacman “success as he begins his tenure and leads NASA as we go back to the Moon in 2028 and beat China”. Duffy had been lobbying to move the space agency under the permanent purview of his own bureau, a fight he lost with Isaacman’s confirmation. Duffy’s consolidation efforts sparked conflict with Musk around the same time that the transportation secretary had said that SpaceX had fallen behind on its contracts with Nasa and looked to the private company’s competitors, in particular Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, for alternatives.
