(NewsNation) — The Trump administration's nominee to pb NASA volition look a confirmation proceeding successful the Senate connected Wednesday.
Jared Isaacman is an entrepreneur and commercialized astronaut whose ideas for the bureau see prioritizing landing humans connected Mars and returning to the satellite to found a semipermanent presence.
Unlike galore erstwhile NASA administrators, Isaacman does not person a inheritance successful nationalist service. He is simply a billionaire businessman whose luck enabled him to question to space, including connected the Inspiration4 mission, the archetypal all-citizen spaceflight.
NASA has leaned much connected backstage manufacture partnerships successful caller decades, moving with companies similar SpaceX and Boeing to make trade to instrumentality goods and radical to the International Space Station and yet to the moon.
The partnerships purpose to trim NASA spending and spur innovation, though they person besides posed challenges, including the astir caller Starliner trial formation that resulted successful an extra-long enactment astatine the ISS for its crew.
Isaacman besides participated successful the archetypal commercialized spacewalk connected the Polaris Dawn mission, making him the archetypal backstage national to locomotion successful space.
His luck comes from the outgo institution Shift4, which helium founded erstwhile helium was 16 years old.
Isaacman would regenerate NASA acting Administrator Janet Petro arsenic the bureau is being lobbied by Florida leaders to marque the authorities its caller headquarters.