Commander Jared Isaacman of Polaris Dawn, a personal human spaceflight mission, speaks at a press convention on the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S. August 19, 2024.
Joe Skipper | Reuters
President Donald Trump has met with Jared Isaacman to debate one other nomination to steer NASA, a supply acquainted with the talks confirmed to CNBC’s Morgan Brennan.
Isaacman, who has shut ties with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, was on the White House in September for Trump’s dinner for tech energy gamers. Musk didn’t attend.
Trump and Isaacman have had a number of in-person conferences in current weeks to speak about the Shift4 founder’s imaginative and prescient for the area program, in accordance with Bloomberg, citing an individual acquainted with the conferences.
After a fiery back-and-forth between Musk and Trump over authorities spending, the president pulled Isaacman’s nomination for the put up, saying he was a “blue blooded Democrat, who had never contributed to a Republican before.”
“I also thought it inappropriate that a very close friend of Elon, who was in the Space Business, run NASA, when NASA is such a big part of Elon’s corporate life,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social put up on June 6.
Trump named Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy interim head of NASA in July.
Isaacman, who declined to remark, was initially nominated in December to steer the space agency.
Isaacman is a seasoned area traveller, having led two personal spaceflights with SpaceX in 2021 and 2024. Shift4 has invested $27.5 million in SpaceX, in accordance with a 2021 submitting.
Isaacman stepped down as CEO from Shift4, the funds firm he based in 1999 on the age of 16, after his nomination was pulled, and now serves as executive chairman.
“Even knowing the outcome, I would do it all over again,” Isaacman wrote about the NASA nomination course of in a letter to investors saying the Shift4 change.
Now, it seems like he will get to do it another time.
Tensions between Musk and Trump have cooled within the months since, however huge challenges face the U.S. area program..
Trump has proposed reducing greater than $6 billion from NASA’s budget.
As a results of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative, which Musk led within the first half of 2025, round 4,000 NASA staff took deferred resignation program gives, reducing the area company’s employees of 18,000 by about one-fifth.
During the October authorities shutdown, NASA has made exceptions that enable staff to maintain engaged on missions involving Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin.
