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[Victoria Watcher]

[Victoria Watcher]

Jared Isaacman confirmed as NASA chief after monthslong tug-of-war

 

https://www.cnn.com/...man-senate-vote

 

 

 

Isaacman, a private astronaut and CEO of payments company Shift4, is now set to take the helm at NASA just weeks before the agency is expected to launch Artemis II, a mission that will carry four astronauts around the moon and mark the farthest into space humans have traveled since the Apollo program ended in 1972.

 

When Trump first selected Isaacman for the NASA role in late 2024, the choice sparked excitement among space industry leaders who view Isaacman as a changemaker. The nomination also raised concerns about conflicts of interest.

 

Since founding Shift4 in 1999 at the age of 16, Isaacman has made a name for himself in the space industry by self-funding experimental flights to Earth orbit. He’s flown to space twice — both times in partnership with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 17 December 2025 - 03:00 PM.

[Victoria Watcher]

[Victoria Watcher]

New

@NASA

Administrator

@rookisaacman

Jared Isaacman is donating his salary to

@SpaceCampUSA

! Look under the • Inspiration paragraph of this note. As a Board member of this great organization, thank you, Jared!

 

 

 

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 19 December 2025 - 05:02 AM.

[Victoria Watcher]

US lawmakers confirmed fintech billionaire and SpaceX astronaut Jared Isaacman to run NASA on Wednesday, ending a prolonged and whipsawing nomination process that had left the space agency without a permanent administrator for most of the year. He speaks with Bloomberg's Ed Ludlow about Trump's executive order reaffirming the Artemis program, NASA's relevancy and his ambitions to put a base on the moon.

 

 

YouTUBE: https://youtu.be/Mfe...V8T3ggpNaSLrSUz

[Mike K.]

The tech bros are taking over even the government space programs. Interesting turn of events.

[Victoria Watcher]

The tech bros are taking over even the government space programs. Interesting turn of events.

 

He's qualified.  Read his bio.

 

 

Isaacman has logged over 7,000 flight hours. He co-founded the Black Diamond Jet Team, in 2010, which performs at airshows.  He made two attempts to break the world record for circumnavigating the globe in a light jet, achieving the record in 2009 with a time of 61 hours, 51 minutes, and 15 seconds—about 20 hours faster than the previous record.  He received the call sign "Rook" during fighter jet training.

 

Isaacman is flight-qualified in multiple military jet aircraft including the A-4, Alpha, F-5, L-39, L-159, MB-339, MiG-29UB, T-33, and T-38 along with multiple civilian jet aircraft including the Challenger 650, Citation Mustang, CitationJet and Premier.

 

https://en.wikipedia.../Jared_Isaacman

 

 

 

 

 

He's also the first NASA chief administrator that has ever been to space (and he's been twice).

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 21 December 2025 - 10:01 AM.

[Mike K.]

He’s no Jack Parsons!

[Victoria Watcher]

German woman makes history as first wheelchair user in space

European Space Agency engineer Michaela Benthaus went suborbital aboard a Jeff Bezos Blue Origin rocket



https://nationalpost...ace-blue-origin

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 21 December 2025 - 01:42 PM.

[Victoria Watcher]

He’s no Jack Parsons!

That guy was a pyro more than I at 15.

[Victoria Watcher]

Space-X:

 

[Victoria Watcher]

 

https://x.com/XFreez...451992652927213

[Victoria Watcher]

Elon Musk's SpaceX is taking over his artificial intelligence (AI) start-up, as the billionaire continues to unify some of his many business interests.

 

SpaceX confirmed the deal to acquire xAI, a smaller firm known for its Grok chatbot, posting a memo from Musk about the merger on its website.

 

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. However, a source familiar said it valued xAI at $125bn (£91bn) and SpaceX at $1tn, making it the most valuable private company ever.

 

In his memo, Musk said the combination would form an "innovation engine" putting AI, rockets, space-based internet, and media under one roof.

 

 

 

https://www.bbc.com/...es/cq6vnrye06po

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 03 February 2026 - 08:31 PM.

[Victoria Watcher]

Elon Musk has vowed that SpaceX's gigantic Starship rocket is on the cusp of its 2026 debut.

 

In a Jan. 26 post on social media site X, which Musk owns, the world's richest man teased that the world's largest rocket was just six weeks away from its next launch. If Musk's timeline bears out, that would mean that Starship's next flight test could be on track for early March.

 

Starship, which stands more than 400 feet tall when fully stacked, hasn't gotten off the ground in more than three months from SpaceX's Starbase headquarters in South Texas. That October mission, the vehicle's 11th flight test overall, further helped SpaceX end 2025 on an optimistic note after the year began with a series of three explosive failures for Starship.

 

When Musk's commercial spaceflight company next rolls out Starship to the launch pad, it will be a brand new design of a vehicle destined to help astronauts land on the moon and eventually journey to Mars.

 

 

https://www.usatoday...12/88412374007/

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 03 February 2026 - 08:33 PM.

[Victoria Watcher]

It was just after 3 a.m. when the alert arrived at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. A sudden spike in a sea of radio noise, lasting barely ten seconds, caught the attention of the night team. Coffee cups were set down unfinished. Conversations halted mid-sentence. A silence fell over the room, the kind that only happens when something monumental is unfolding, but no one dares to say it out loud. Then, the numbers began to line up: the redshift, the energy signature, the delay. Thirteen billion years. A whisper from a time when planets, humans, and everything we know didn’t exist. It was just raw, unformed cosmos.

 

https://beamhealthcl...-second-signal/

[Victoria Watcher]

Why did SpaceX just apply to launch 1 million satellites?

SpaceX says it wants to deploy an astronomical number of data centres in orbit to supply power for artificial intelligence, but the proposal might not be entirely serious

https://www.newscien...ion-satellites/