New Delhi: US President Donald Trump has announced the US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy as the Interim Administrator of NASA. In a post on X, Duffy said, “Honored to accept this mission. Time to take over space. Let’s launch.” The move has been criticized by scientists as most NASA Administrators in the past were deeply involved in spaceflight with engineering backgrounds, while Duffy has a legal and administrative background. In his youth, he was a reality TV star and a lumberjack champion. It remains to be seen if Duffy’s proximity to the US President benefits the agency. Duffy had visited the NASA HQ in Washington DC to follow the Crew 9 splashdown in March.

Janet Petro the former Director of the Kennedy Space Centre (KSC) was appointed as acting NASA Administrator on 21 January, following the resignation of the previous Administrator Bill Nelson a day after Trump assumed office. Petro is now returning to the KSC. About a month before assuming office, Trump had announced Jared Isaacman as his nomination for NASA Administrator, but withdrew the nomination because of Isaacman’s proximity to Elon Musk following the troll feud. Trump announced Sean Duffy as the ‘interim’ administrator to NASA through a post on Truth Social, noting “He will be a fantastic leader of the ever more important Space Agency, even if only for a short period of time.”

What Sean Duffy is working on

As the Transportation Secretary, Duffy has been working towards upgrading American Airspace and moving quickly to modernise the infrastructure. Duffy is also expanding the ground transport infrastructure by prioritising speed of construction to prevent project costs from ballooning, has been taking efforts to remove hurdles caused by environmental considerations, as well as encouraging innovation and easing commercial operations by reducing paperwork. Duffy has been pushing for aggressive as against incremental change, and intends to infuse the transportation systems with cutting-edge technology. The proposed Skinny Budget for NASA by the Trump Administration and the CSJ bill introduced by the US Senate both focus on advancing the human space transportation capabilities of NASA for crewed missions to the Moon and Mars.