One of the big issues left up in the air has to do with who\u2019ll be at the helm at the world\u2019s leading space agency. On his first day in office, President Donald Trump chose tech billionaire Jared Isaacman<\/a> to become NASA\u2019s administrator. In May, Trump withdrew the nomination<\/a> in the midst of a spat with SpaceX founder Elon Musk \u2014 but just this month, Isaacman\u2019s nomination was revived<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the interim, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy was doing double duty as NASA\u2019s acting administrator \u2014 and reportedly making his own pitch to lead NASA<\/a>. Now the rivalry has apparently been patched over.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Isaacman, who basically created his own space program<\/a> and has been on two privately funded<\/a> flights to orbit<\/a>, received largely positive reviews<\/a> after his first Senate confirmation hearing in April. Dreier said it\u2019s likely that the second hearing, which hasn\u2019t yet been scheduled, will also give a thumbs-up to Isaacman\u2019s renomination.<\/p>\n \u201cI think a lot of people see that \u2014 given the range of potential options, and who is running some of the other scientific agencies in the government right now \u2014 having someone who doesn\u2019t dislike the agency that they want to run is actually not bad,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n But Isaacman will still have things to answer for. Just days before his renomination was announced, Politico obtained a leaked copy of a 62-page report<\/a> in which Isaacman laid out his vision for reforming NASA. (It\u2019s thought that the document, known as Project Athena, was leaked by Duffy in hopes of boosting his own chances of getting the job.)<\/p>\n The Project Athena report suggests shifting some responsibility for space science missions from NASA centers to commercial ventures. It calls for taking NASA out of the \u201ctaxpayer-funded climate science business\u201d and leaving it up for academia to study such issues. And it raises questions about long-term funding for NASA\u2019s heavy-lift Space Launch System<\/a> and for a Gateway<\/a> outpost in lunar orbit.<\/p>\n All those moves are consistent with the Trump administration\u2019s budget priorities, but they may not sit well with members of Congress whose states benefit from spending on SLS, Gateway and other elements of NASA\u2019s current Artemis moon program.<\/p>\n The report also calls for NASA to investigate the \u201crelevance and ongoing necessity\u201d of each of more than a dozen agency centers across the country \u2014 including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages many of NASA\u2019s robotic space exploration missions.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat is \u2018built\u2019 at JPL?\u201d Isaacman asked in the report.<\/p>\n After the report was leaked, Isaacman responded to the criticism he was getting in a lengthy posting to the X social-media platform<\/a>. He said that the leaked draft was written before his initial nomination was withdrawn in May, and that \u201cparts of it are now dated.\u201d He also insisted that his plan \u201cnever favored any one vendor, never recommended closing centers, or directed the cancellation of programs before objectives were achieved.\u201d<\/p>\n Isaacman said the report didn\u2019t specifically call for the SLS rocket program to be shut down, but only suggested exploring \u201cthe possibility of pivoting hardware and resources to a nuclear electric propulsion program<\/a> after the objectives of the president\u2019s budget are complete.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt was written as a starting place to give NASA, international partners, and the commercial sector the best chance for long-term success,\u201d Isaacman wrote. \u201cThe more I see the imperfections of politics and the lengths people will go, the more I want to serve and be part of the solution \u2026 because I love NASA and I love my country.\u201d<\/p>\n Dreier said he supported some of the ideas laid out in Project Athena.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are parts of it that I liked \u2026 setting these expectations for the performance that we need to have in order to do big things,\u201d he said. \u201cI really think nuclear electric power is incredibly important, probably the most important legacy if he\u2019s able to move that through.\u201d<\/p>\n Dreier said the fact that Isaacman isn\u2019t a partisan ideologue should help him navigate the narrow straits of Senate confirmation.<\/p>\n \u201cHe does want to make NASA better, and so I\u2019m personally optimistic that he will take some of this feedback and learn from this,\u201d Dreier said. \u201cBut he\u2019ll have to probably make a lot of promises not to do things in that document in order to get confirmed.\u201d<\/p>\n Assuming Isaacman does get confirmed, he\u2019ll have to navigate an obstacle course in space policy that\u2019s as tricky as the asteroid field Han Solo faced in \u201cThe Empire Strikes Back.\u201d<\/a> Here are a few of the questions that the next NASA administrator will have to resolve:<\/p>\n How deeply will science be slashed? Trump\u2019s budget request calls for reducing NASA\u2019s overall funding by 24% in 2026<\/a>, and cutting science spending by 47%. If the budget ends up being slashed that much, dozens of space science projects<\/a> \u2014 including NASA\u2019s Mars sample return campaign<\/a>, the Juno mission at Jupiter<\/a> and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope<\/a> \u2014 would have to be abandoned. Congress isn\u2019t likely to support cuts that deep, so it would probably be up to Isaacman to mediate between Capitol Hill and the White House. Dreier said he\u2019s worried about SpaceX\u2019s dominant role in America\u2019s space effort, including the plan to send American astronauts to the moon. \u201cIf you frame this as a national space race and as a national goal, we have therefore put our nation\u2019s reputation and goals in the hands of literally one company to deliver on that space race,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He\u2019s also worried that NASA will tighten its focus on \u201cjust one or two celestial bodies\u201d while cutting back on space science in general.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s way more opportunities for engineers, there\u2019s way fewer opportunities for scientists,\u201d Dreier said. \u201cPeople talk about, \u2018Why do we have NASA when we have SpaceX?\u2019 Show me how many interplanetary spacecraft SpaceX has built. How many scientific instruments have they designed and sent to Venus, or what have you? They could if they wanted to, but they don\u2019t, because they\u2019re not interested in that. \u2026 Where the scientists go, I honestly do not know.\u201d<\/p>\n Alan Boyle was a moderator for this week\u2019s ScienceWriters2025<\/a> session on space policy. He\u2019s also a volunteer member of the board at the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing<\/a>, which was one of the organizers of the conference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASA is facing increasingly sharp challenges as it pursues its goal of landing astronauts on the moon again…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265794,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-265793","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-space","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/251113-dreier-moskowitz_20251115_061719.jpg\"\/)
<\/a> The Planetary Society\u2019s Casey Dreier, seen on the video screen, discusses space policy with Clara Moskowitz of Scientific American at a ScienceWriters2025 session. (Photo by Alan Boyle)<\/p>\n
\nHow soon the moon? NASA\u2019s current timeline calls for the Artemis 3\u2019s astronauts to set foot on the moon in 2027, but last month Duffy hinted that the schedule was slipping to 2028<\/a>. He also said NASA might reconsider its plan to have SpaceX\u2019s Starship put the first crew on the lunar surface. \u201cThey push their timelines out, and we\u2019re in a race against China,\u201d Duffy said. \u201cThe president and I want to get to the moon in this president\u2019s term, so I\u2019m going to open up the contracts.\u201d In response, SpaceX said it would create a \u201csimplified\u201d version of Starship<\/a> for Artemis 3. Looking ahead, Isaacman would play a key role in deciding whether to stick with SpaceX or shift to Blue Origin<\/a>.
\nFocus on the moon, or Mars? The Trump administration wants NASA\u2019s Artemis program to put astronauts back on the moon before a Chinese crew gets there, but Trump is most interested in planting the Stars and Stripes on Mars<\/a>. SpaceX has talked about sending a robotically controlled Starship to the Red Planet in 2026 or 2028<\/a>, and although that timeline looks unrealistic right now, Isaacman just might find himself under pressure to make it so. The Project Athena report includes references to a \u201cProject Olympus\u201d<\/a> that would test technologies for landing humans on Mars.
\nWhat about the SpaceX connection? Isaacman worked closely with SpaceX on his two orbital missions and is said to have invested tens of millions of dollars<\/a> in the company. His first nomination ran aground in part because of concerns that his relationship with SpaceX and Elon Musk might pose a conflict of interest. During last year\u2019s Senate confirmation hearing, Isaacman took pains to reassure lawmakers about his ties to SpaceX. \u201cNASA is the customer,\u201d he said at the time. \u201cThey work for us, not the other way around.\u201d Isaacman is sure to be asked about the relationship again during the deliberations to come.<\/p>\n