NASA finally has a leader, but its future is no longer assured

After a year without a rudder and a exodus of around 4,000 employees Due to the Trump administration’s budget cuts, NASA recently received what may be its first piece of good news. On December 17, the Senate confirmed billionaire Jared Isaacman as the agency’s new administrator. It now holds the power to rehabilitate a broken scientific research engine, or direct it towards even more disruption.

Given the caliber of President Trump’s other appointees, Isaacman is likely the best candidate for this position. In addition to being a successful entrepreneur, he has flown fighter jets and traveled to space twice as part of the Inspiration4 And Polar Dawn private missions. One of these flights saw him take the first walk through the commercial spaceand has traveled further from Earth than any human since the end of the Apollo program.

“Perfect is the enemy of good. Isaacman checks a lot of boxes,” says Keith Cowing, former NASA employee and founder of NASA Watch, a blog dedicated to the agency. “He met all the requirements for flying in a spacecraft that American NASA astronauts must meet. He also went out of his way to have a diverse crew and put as much science as possible into these missions.”

And yet, if you’re a NASA employee or simply someone who cares about the agency’s work, there are still plenty of reasons to worry about its future. When Trump first nominated Isaacman in the spring, the billionaire wrote a 62-page document detailing his vision for NASA. In November, Policy obtained a copy of this plantitled Project Athena.

For some insiders, Project Athena painted a portrait of someone who, at least at the time it was written, fundamentally misunderstood how NASA worked and how scientific discovery was funded in the United States and elsewhere. It also suggests that Isaacman might be more open to Trump’s agenda for NASA than it seems at first glance.

Asked about the plan by Policya former NASA official called him “weird and careless.” Another called it “presumptuous,” given that many of the proposed changes to the agency’s structure would require congressional approval. In one section, Isaacman recommended removing “NASA from the taxpayer-funded climate science business and [leaving] it is up to academia to determine this. In another section, he promised to evaluate the “relevance and continued necessity” of each agency center, particularly NASA’s iconic Jet Propulsion Laboratory, saying the facility and others must increase “throughput and time to research science KPIs.”

Much has changed since Isaacman first wrote this document. This happened before the downsizing, before the future of Goddard Space Flight Center became uncertain and before Trump surprised everyone by reappointing Isaacman. But during his testimony in the Senate Earlier this month, the billionaire said: “I support everything in the document, even though it was written seven months ago. I think everything was in the right direction.”

However, he seems to distance himself from certain points of view expressed or inferred by the Athena Project. Isaacman said that “anything that suggests that I am anti-science or that I want to outsource this responsibility is simply false.” He also spoke out against the administration’s plan to cut NASA’s science budget by nearly half, saying the proposals does not lead to “an optimal result”.

One thing is clear: Isaacman is not a typical bureaucrat. “One of the pitfalls of some former NASA administrators has been showing too much respect for the agency’s internal processes and bureaucratic structure at the expense of decision-making and performance.” said Casey Drierhead of space policy at The Planetary Societya non-profit organization that advocates for the exploration and study of space. “Isaacman has positioned himself in opposition to that. Obviously, this is something that could lead to a lot of political and congressional challenges if taken too far.”

Even if Isaacman doesn’t follow through on any of the proposals made under Project Athena, there’s only so much a NASA administrator — even one sympathetic to the officials who work under him — can do.

“Once a budget request is made public, everyone in the administration has to defend it. Everything he does has to be internal and private,” says Drier. “He never explicitly criticized the administration during his hearing. He also comes relatively late in the budget process.”

Much of NASA’s future will depend on the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which is responsible for implementing the president’s agenda within the executive branch. As a direct result of advice the OMB issued this summer, NASA awarded 25 percent fewer new grants in 2025 than on average between 2020 and 2024.

“OMB has added layers of requirements that scientists must now meet to spend money they have already been allocated. The administration has worked against its own stated efficiency goals,” Drier said. “Isaacman can’t solve this problem himself. He can’t tell OMB what to do. This is going to be a big challenge.”

The fact that NASA still has no annual budget for 2026 threatens all of this. Congress has until Jan. 30 to fund NASA and the rest of the federal government before the short-term funding bill it passed Nov. 12 expires. “On paper, the administration’s official policy is still to eliminate a third of NASA’s scientific capabilities,” Drier emphasizes.

There are reasons to be cautiously optimistic. Publicly, the House and Senate have come out against Trump’s budget cuts. And some scientific missions that had to be canceled, like OSIRIS-APEXwere approved for another full year of operation.

What NASA needs now is someone who, as Drier says, will “vigorously defend” the agency’s interests in every way possible. It remains to be seen whether it’s Jared Isaacman.