Jared Isaacman, billionaire, CEO and nominee to become the next NASA administrator, faced questions on April 9, 2025, from members of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation during his confirmation hearing for the position.
Should the Senate confirm him, Isaacman will be the first billionaire – but not the first astronaut – to head NASA. Perhaps even more significant, he will be the first NASA administrator with significant ties to the commercial space industry.
As a space policy expert, I know that NASA leadership matters. The head of the agency can significantly shape the missions it pursues, the science it undertakes and, ultimately, the outcome of America’s space exploration.
Jared Isaacman speaks at a news conference in 2024, before his Polaris Dawn mission.
AP Photo/John Raoux, File
An unconventional background
At 16 years old, Isaacman dropped out of high school to start a payment processing company in his basement. The endeavor succeeded and eventually became known as Shift4.
Though he found early success in business, Isaacman also had a love for aviation. In 2009, he set a record for flying around the Earth in a light jet, beating the previous record by more than 20 hours.
While remaining CEO of Shift4, Isaacman founded another company, Draken International. The company eventually assembled the world’s largest fleet of privately owned fighter jets. It now helps to train U.S. Air Force pilots.
In 2019, Isaacman sold his stake in Draken International. In 2020, he took Shift4 public, making him a billionaire.
Isaacman continued to branch out into aerospace, working with SpaceX beginning in 2021. He purchased a crewed flight on the Falcon 9 rocket, a mission that eventually was called Inspiration4. The mission, which he led, represented the first private astronaut flight for SpaceX. It sent four civilians with no previous formal space experience into orbit.
Following the success of Inspiration4, Isaacman worked with SpaceX to develop the Polaris Program, a series of three missions to help build SpaceX’s human spaceflight capabilities. In fall 2024, the first of these missions, Polaris Dawn, launched.
Polaris Dawn added more accomplishments to Isaacman’s resume. Isaacman, along with his crewmate Sarah Gillis, completed the first private spacewalk. Polaris Dawn’s SpaceX Dragon capsule traveled more than 850 miles (1,367 kilometers) from Earth, the farthest distance humans had been since the Apollo missions.
The Polaris Dawn mission launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in September 2024.
AP Photo/John Raoux
The next adventure: NASA
In December 2024, the incoming Trump administration announced its intention to nominate Isaacman for the post of NASA administrator.
As NASA administrator, Isaacman would oversee all NASA activities at a critical moment in its history. The Artemis program, which has been in…
