NASA lastly has a frontrunner, however its future isn’t any extra sure

After a rudderless 12 months and an exodus of around 4,000 employees as a consequence of Trump administration cuts, NASA obtained what could also be its first piece of excellent information just lately. On December 17, the Senate confirmed billionaire Jared Isaacman because the company’s new administrator. He now holds the ability to rehabilitate a battered engine of scientific analysis, or steer it in direction of much more disruption.

Contemplating the caliber of President Trump’s different appointees, Isaacman might be one of the best candidate for the job. Exterior of being a profitable entrepreneur, he has flown fighter jets and been to house twice as a part of the Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn non-public missions. A kind of flights noticed him complete the first commercial space walk, and journey farther from Earth than any human because the finish of the Apollo program.

“Good is the enemy of the nice. Isaacman checks plenty of packing containers,” says Keith Cowing, a former NASA worker and the founding father of NASA Watch, a blog dedicated to the agency. “He is handed each requirement to fly in a spacecraft that American astronauts at NASA are required to cross. He additionally went out of his method to have a various crew, and shove as a lot science as he may in these missions.”

And but when you’re a NASA worker or simply somebody who cares concerning the company’s work, there are nonetheless loads of causes to be involved for its future. When Trump first nominated Isaacman within the spring, the billionaire wrote a 62-page doc detailing his imaginative and prescient for NASA. In November, Politico obtained a copy of that plan, titled Undertaking Athena.

To some insiders, Undertaking Athena painted an image of somebody who, at the very least on the time when it was written, basically misunderstood how NASA works and the way scientific discovery is funded within the US and elsewhere. It additionally suggests Isaacman could also be extra open to Trump’s NASA agenda than would seem at first look.

When requested concerning the plan by Politico, one former NASA official characterised it as “weird and careless.” One other referred to as it “presumptuous,” given most of the proposed adjustments to the company’s construction would require Congressional approval. In a single part, Isaacman really helpful taking “NASA out of the taxpayer funded local weather science enterprise and [leaving] it for academia to find out.” In one other part, he promised to guage the “relevance and ongoing necessity” of each company heart, notably NASA’s iconic Jet Propulsion Laboratory, saying the power and others should improve the “output and time to science KPI.”

So much has modified since Isaacman first wrote that doc. It got here earlier than the workforce cuts, earlier than the future of Goddard Space Flight Center turned unsure and earlier than Trump stunned everybody by renominating Isaacman. However during his Senate testimony earlier this month, the billionaire stated “I do stand behind every part within the doc, despite the fact that it was written seven months in the past. I believe it was all directionally right.”

He did seem to distance himself from some viewpoints expressed in or inferred by Undertaking Athena, nonetheless. Isaacman acknowledged that “something suggesting that I’m anti-science or wish to outsource that accountability is just unfaithful.” He additionally got here out in opposition to the administration’s plan to chop NASA’s science finances practically in half, claiming the proposals would not lead to “an optimal outcome.”

One factor is evident, Isaacman will not be your typical bureaucrat. “One of many pitfalls of some prior NASA directors has been that they’ve proven an excessive amount of reverence for the interior processes and bureaucratic construction of the company to the detriment of decision-making and efficiency,” said Casey Drier, chief of house coverage at The Planetary Society, a nonprofit that advocates for the exploration and research of house. “Isaacman has positioned himself as the alternative of that. Clearly, that is one thing that would result in plenty of political and congressional challenges if taken too far.”

Even when Isaacman does not comply with by way of on any of the proposals made in Undertaking Athena, there’s solely a lot a NASA administrator — even one sympathetic to civil servants working below them — can do.

“As soon as a finances request goes out publicly, everybody within the administration has to defend it. Something he does must be inner and personal,” Drier explains. “He by no means explicitly criticized the administration throughout his listening to. He is additionally coming comparatively late within the finances course of.”

Plenty of NASA’s future will rely upon the White Home Workplace of Administration and Funds (OMB), which is chargeable for implementing the president’s agenda throughout the chief department. As a direct results of guidance the OMB issued over the summer season, NASA awarded 25 percent fewer new grants in 2025 than it did on common between 2020 and 2024.

“The OMB has added layers of necessities that scientists now must undergo to spend the cash they’ve already been allotted. The administration has labored in opposition to its personal acknowledged targets of effectivity,” Drier stated. “Isaacman cannot clear up that himself. He cannot inform the OMB what to do. That is going to be a critical problem.”

Looming over every part is the very fact NASA nonetheless doesn’t have a full-year finances for 2026. Congress has till January 30 to fund NASA and the remainder of the federal authorities earlier than the short-term funding invoice it handed on November 12 runs out. “On paper, the official coverage of the administration remains to be to terminate a 3rd of NASA’s scientific functionality,” Drier factors out.

There are causes to be cautiously optimistic. Publicly, each the Home and Senate have come out in opposition to Trump’s funding cuts. And a few science missions that have been slated to be cancelled, akin to OSIRIS-APEX, have been authorized for one more full 12 months of operations.

What NASA wants now could be somebody who will, as Drier places it, “vigorously advocate” for the company in no matter manner they will. It stays to be seen if that is Jared Isaacman.