NASA lastly has a pacesetter, however its future is not any extra sure

After a rudderless 12 months and an exodus of around 4,000 employees as a consequence of Trump administration cuts, NASA acquired 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 the 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. Outdoors of being a profitable entrepreneur, he has flown fighter jets and been to house twice as a part of the Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn personal missions. A type of flights noticed him complete the first commercial space walk, and journey farther from Earth than any human for the reason that finish of the Apollo program.

“Excellent is the enemy of the great. Isaacman checks loads of 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 go. He additionally went out of his approach to have a various crew, and shove as a lot science as he might in these missions.”

And but if you happen to’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 Challenge Athena.

To some insiders, Challenge Athena painted an image of somebody who, not less than 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 modifications 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 ability and others should improve the “output and time to science KPI.”

Rather a lot 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, though 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 Challenge Athena, nevertheless. Isaacman acknowledged that “something suggesting that I’m anti-science or wish to outsource that duty is solely unfaithful.” He additionally got here out towards the administration’s plan to chop NASA’s science price range 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 examine of house. “Isaacman has positioned himself as the alternative of that. Clearly, that is one thing that would result in loads of political and congressional challenges if taken too far.”

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

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

A number of NASA’s future will rely on the White Home Workplace of Administration and Funds (OMB), which is liable for implementing the president’s agenda throughout the manager department. As a direct results of guidance the OMB issued over the summer time, 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 towards its personal acknowledged targets of effectivity,” Drier stated. “Isaacman cannot resolve that himself. He cannot inform the OMB what to do. That is going to be a critical problem.”

Looming over every part is the actual fact NASA nonetheless doesn’t have a full-year price range 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 towards Trump’s funding cuts. And a few science missions that had been slated to be cancelled, akin to OSIRIS-APEX, have been accredited for one more full 12 months of operations.

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