Trump's choice to head NASA grilled by Senate on future of space agency, moon program, and Mars

President Donald Trump's nominee to lead NASA, entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, faced questions from senators on Wednesday about how to balance Trump's focus on reaching Mars with the US space agency's flagship moon program.

Isaacman, CEO of payment processing company Shift4 Payments, is a close partner of Elon Musk's SpaceX, who has flown to space twice as a private astronaut on the company's spacecraft.

The billionaire is in Washington for a confirmation hearing before the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, in which conflicting views on the moon and Mars as a destination for US astronauts were front and center.

If confirmed, Isaacman, 42, would oversee 18,000 employees and a budget of roughly $25 billion, focused heavily on returning astronauts to the moon's surface as part of a program called Artemis. Trump started the program during his first term.

Senator Ted Cruz, whose state of Texas includes NASA's Houston-based Johnson Space Center, pressed the nominee on his moon program views, noting intense competition over the moon with China, which aims to send its own astronauts there by 2030.

"I am hard pressed to think of a more catastrophic mistake we could make in space than saying to Communist China, 'the moon is yours. America will not lead,'" Cruz said in his opening statement.

Live: Watch the U.S. Senate committee hearing for Jared Isaacman's nomination to be NASA Administrator. https://t.co/88DPFQwiUg

undefined NASA (@NASA) April 9, 2025

But the president and Musk, who spent $250 million in support of Trump's presidential campaign and pushed for Isaacman's nomination, have become fixated on Mars as a national priority, raising questions about NASA's moon program for which billions of dollars have been committed.

"I absolutely want to see us return to the Moon... we don't have to make a binary decision of Moon versus Mars," Isaacman said, adding that NASA can do simultaneous Moon and Mars missions.

When asked if he supports NASA's Space Launch System rocket, a multibillion-dollar pillar of the moon program, Isaacman did not offer explicit support, but said the rocket is part of the current plan and that he wants to see the Artemis 2 crew get to the moon.

Isaacman has previously criticized SLS as "outrageously expensive."

"I do believe it's the best and fastest way to get there," he later said of SLS and Orion, the multibillion-dollar Lockheed Martin-built crew capsule that sits atop SLS.

Asked if he has had any contact with Musk on how he would run NASA, Isaacman said "not at all," and that his loyalty is to NASA, not contractors such as SpaceX - "they're the contractors, NASA is the customer.

Contracts with SpaceX

They work for us, not the other way around."SpaceX has roughly $15 billion worth of NASA contracts, offering the agency its only US ride for astronauts to space and a moon lander that will land crews on the moon later this decade.

Isaacman also told senators he does not see why the International Space Station, the 25-year-old science lab in space, should be deorbited before the current plan of 2030 - when NASA hopes to replace it with private space stations.

Musk has called for the station to be deorbited in 2027 to focus on Mars, a surprise position that angered Cruz, according to three people familiar with his thinking. SpaceX has a contract to deorbit the ISS in 2030.

The four astronauts assigned to NASA's Artemis 2 mission - which involves a fly-by of the moon in 2026 before a subsequent moon landing mission - had front row seats in the hearing.

As a Musk ally and astronaut on novel SpaceX missions, Isaacman would reinforce NASA's strategy of depending on private companies for accessing space as a commercial service - a model that threatens space programs held by established contractors like Boeing and Northrop Grumman, the two main builders of SLS.

Isaacman's background has won him the endorsement from a key industry group representing more than 85 space companies as well as 28 former astronauts.

While NASA's last two leaders were seasoned politicians who proved effective in navigating the agency's funders in Congress, Isaacman has no political experience, though during the hearing he cast his unusual background as an advantage.