Donald Trump, the new president-elect of the United States, has appointed billionaire astronaut Jared Isaacman as administrator of NASA. He will succeed Bill Nelson as soon as the new American administration takes office in January 2025.
This is called a radical change. After four years of operation under the leadership of a former senator specializing in space affairs (and who had carried out a space flight in the shuttle), NASA will be led by a billionaire passionate about space who has just carried out two missions in orbit aboard Space The 41-year-old distinguished himself in September 2024 during the Polaris Dawn mission, during which he became the first private astronaut to carry out a spacewalk in a spacesuit. Just as for his first foray into orbit, in September 2021, Jared Isaacman financed his flight aboard the vessel built by Space ‘government effectiveness’ in the Trump administration, are therefore narrow. Recently, after the fifth successful test flight of Space X’s Starship, Jared Isaacman declared on the social network the greatest feats of state-funded engineering, like landing humans on the moon or the Manhattan Project.” On November 19, again, he wrote: “Without Space X taking on this challenge 22 years ago [ndlr : celui de fonder son entreprise de lanceurs privés] and by NASA launching the Commercial Crew program, we would still send Americans into space via Russia.”
It will therefore be interesting to see if this proximity to Space X translates into action when he takes office at the head of NASA.
Likewise, what will happen to its announced participation in the next space missions of its Polaris program? Will the NASA administrator give up his exploits in space which still require weeks of preparation? Or will he continue despite the new responsibility he will have to exercise?
Responses start from January 2025.
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