Billionaire and astronaut Jared Isaacman becomes the new head of the US space agency NASA. The Senate confirmed his appointment by a vote of 67 to 30.
President Trump had already proposed the space tourist Isaacman as NASA boss for the first time last December. In a dispute with SpaceX boss Elon Musk Trump then withdrew the nomination at the end of May. Trump then proposed Isaacman again in early November.
Isaacman is a supporter of Mars missions and a companion of Musk. At his hearing before senators, he said NASA needed to increase its pace China to get ahead of the return to the moon this decade. The acting NASA boss Sean Duffy congratulated Isaacman on Platform X and set the target for return as 2028.
The last time a person was on the moon was in 1972
According to NASA plans, three men and one woman will orbit the moon on the ten-day Artemis 2 mission in the first half of 2026. The last person to date on the moon was there in December 1972, during the NASA Apollo 17 mission. In the longer term, the Gateway station is to be built on the moon.
Isaacman has had two in recent years private space missions
participated. In 2021, he orbited the Earth together with three other astronauts for almost three days. In September 2024, he was on board the Polaris Dawn mission with three other space tourists, during which they floated at an altitude of around 1,400 kilometers and also briefly got out of their spacecraft.
