The next Nasa leader will prioritize sending American astronauts to Mars if he is confirmed, a Senate panel heard on Wednesday.
But the billionaire Jared Isaacman, an entrepreneur who has privately funded his own journeys into space, insisted he would not abandon current plans to land humans back on the moon in 2027, despite placing greater emphasis on missions to the red planet.
Isaacman, 42, outlined his vision for the future of US space exploration during an unusually convivial confirmation hearing to become Nasa’s 15th permanent administrator before the chamber’s commerce, science and transportation committee.
“As the president stated, we will prioritize sending American astronauts to Mars, and, along the way, we will inevitably have the capabilities to return to the moon and determine the scientific, economic and national security benefits of maintaining a presence,” he said.
“I didn’t say we shouldn’t go to the moon. [But] what’s taking so long to get back to the moon, and why does it cost so much money? I absolutely want to see us return to the moon.”
Under Nasa’s current moon-to-Mars initiative – the first human landing on the lunar surface since 1972, through the Artemis program conceived during Trump’s first term and honed during the Biden administration – is an important stepping stone.
Astronauts would construct a permanent base there, conducting research and building infrastructure crucial to the first crewed mission to Mars currently slated for the late 2030s.
Isaacman said he wants to speed up that schedule, while developing moon and Mars expeditions in parallel.
“I don’t think these are either-or,” he said before an audience including the four Artemis II astronauts who will fly to the moon and back next year without landing, Americans Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch and Vic Glover and Canadian Jeremy Hansen.
The Texas Republican senator Ted Cruz, the committee’s chair, said he agreed with Isaacman’s assessment that Nasa needed to reclaim the moon as soon as possible, largely to prevent rivals such as China gaining an advantage.
“We are not headed for the next space race. It is already here,” Cruz said.
“The Chinese communist party has been explicit in its desire to dominate space, putting a fully functional space station in low Earth orbit and robotic rovers on the far side of the moon.
“[Nasa’s] stepping-stone approach is explicitly in the law as enacted by Congress. We must stay the course. An extreme shift in priorities at this stage would almost certainly mean a red moon, ceding ground to China for generations to come.”
Isaacman, a close friend of the SpaceX founder and Trump acolyte Elon Musk, said he intended to “reinvigorate a mission-first culture at Nasa”.
He acknowledged he was not “a typical nominee for this position”, but had benefited from his spaceflight experiences, on the five-day orbital Polaris Dawn mission that saw him make the first spacewalk by a civilian last September, and as part of the world’s first crew of private astronauts on a three-day flight in 2021.
“I have been relatively apolitical. I am not a scientist and I never worked at Nasa. I do not think these are weaknesses,” he said.
If confirmed, Isaacman would succeed Bill Nelson, a former space shuttle astronaut, as one of the few Nasa administrators in the agency’s 66-year history with spaceflight experience.
As the youngest-ever Nasa leader, he would lead the agency at what Cruz called a turning point in the space industry, with private companies such as SpaceX taking an ever-larger share of what was previously exclusive government business.
“Nasa is at a crossroads,” the senator said, adding that he believed Isaacman brought “a unique perspective” to the challenges facing the agency and wider space industry.
“The explosive growth of the commercial space sector, from hardware manufacturers to space tourism ventures, has transformed the celestial and economic landscape. Space is no longer the exclusive domain of sovereign nations and a handful of legacy defense contractors.
“The democratization of space has spurred growth, reduced launch and satellite costs and fostered the curiosity of the next generation. At the same time, the future of the final frontier has never been more uncertain.”
The Associated Press contributed reporting
