New Jersey billionaire Jared Isaacman is Trump’s choice to lead NASA

A tech billionaire who bought a series of space flights from Elon Musk’s SpaceX and conducted the first private spacewalk was named to head NASA by President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday.

New Jersey native Jared Isaacman, 41, CEO and founder of a credit card processing company, has worked closely with Musk since purchasing his first charter flight from SpaceX. He took competition winners with him on that trip in 2021 and followed up with a flight in September where he briefly jumped out of the hatch to test SpaceX’s new spacewalker suits.

If confirmed, Isaacman will replace Bill Nelson, 82, a former Democratic senator from Florida who was nominated by President Joe Biden. Nelson flew as a congressman aboard the space shuttle Columbia in 1986 – on the flight shortly before the Challenger disaster.

Isaacman said he was honored to be nominated and was “grateful to serve.” “Having been fortunate enough to see our amazing planet from space, I am thrilled to see America lead the most incredible adventure in human history,” he said of X.

During Nelson’s tenure, NASA gained momentum in its efforts to return astronauts to the moon. This next-generation Apollo program – named after Apollo’s mythological twin sister Artemis – plans to send four astronauts around the moon as early as next year. This was followed by the first moon landing in more than half a century.

NASA is relying on SpaceX to bring astronauts to the lunar surface via Starship, the mega rocket that launches test flights from Texas.

The space agency already relies on SpaceX to fly astronauts to and from the International Space Station along with supply flights. Boeing launched its first crew for NASA in June, but the Starliner capsule had so many problems that the two test pilots ended up stranded on the space station. After more than eight months in orbit, they will fly home with SpaceX in February. Their mission was supposed to last eight days.

Another thing NASA is currently planning to do is explore the solar system. Robotic missions to the moon and beyond continue: A NASA spacecraft is on its way to Jupiter’s moon Europa and the Mars rover Perseverance is collecting more rock and dirt samples.

Faced with tight budgets, NASA is looking for a faster, cheaper way to get these Mars samples to Earth than the original plan, which had ballooned to $11 billion and didn’t arrive until 2040. As with human spaceflight, NASA has turned to industry and others for ideas and help.

Musk congratulated Isaacman on X, describing him as a man of “high ability and integrity.”

The fighter jet pilot Isaacman, whose given name is Rook, short for rookie, has described himself as a “space freak” since kindergarten. At 16, he dropped out of high school, earned a GED degree, and started a business in his parents’ basement that became Shift4. His company is based in eastern Pennsylvania, where he lives with his wife and their two young daughters.

He set a speed record in 2009 by flying around the world while raising money for the Make-A-Wish program, and later founded Draken International, the world’s largest private fleet of fighter jets.

Isaacman has reserved two more flights with SpaceX, including a trip that will take Starship’s first crew into orbit around Earth.