Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, October 21st According to the disclosure of the Wall Street Journal on the 20th, the battle for the post of director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is "increasingly ugly". Sean Duffy, acting director and U.S. Secretary of Transportation, intends to become a positive, while Jared Isaacman, an American billionaire whose nomination was previously withdrawn by President Trump, also intends to rejoin the competition.

You fight me.

According to people familiar with the matter, representatives of Duffy and Isaac Mann lobbied government officials last weekend, and even called Trump himself. Both sides emphasized that they were the right person to lead NASA.

Duffy contacted multiple industry insiders and asked them to call the White House to highlight Isaac Man's shortcomings, including concerns that Isaac Man was spending professional lobbyists and social media celebrities to lobby. This statement was denied by Isaac Man. Isaac Man's side is also busy with multi-party public relations.

According to reports, Duffy's authority as acting director will expire at the end of this year, and NASA has scheduled a number of major tasks for next year, including the long-delayed manned flight around the moon, which makes the Trump administration urgently need to determine the official director candidate.

Isaac Man is the founder and CEO of the American payment service provider Shift4 Pay. He has a close relationship with Elon Musk. He once invested capital in the Space Exploration Technology Company founded by Musk and has also taken the company's spacecraft many times. Enter space. On May 30 this year, Musk officially stepped down as head of the "Department of Government Efficiency", and the White House withdrew its nomination of Isaac Mann as NASA director the next day. The reason given by the White House at the time was that Isaac Man did not seem to fully support Trump's policy agenda and had donated money to Democrats in the past.

Trump appointed Duffy as acting NASA director in July. After taking office, the latter promoted the New Deal and set a number of lunar landing goals such as building a nuclear reactor on the moon by 2030. According to people familiar with the matter, Duffy even intends to put NASA under the administration of the Department of Transportation.

In addition to Daffy and Isaacman, other potential candidates for NASA directors include retired Air Force officer Joseph Guestera and former Republican Federal Representative Mike Garcia.

The White House said that Trump will personally announce the final decision on the selection of the director after it is made.

competition on the moon.

Duffy was interviewed by multiple media on the 20th and seemed to deliberately emphasize his control over NASA. In an interview, Duffy criticized Space Exploration Technologies for being "behind schedule" in carrying out the mission to return to the moon, saying it was seeking other private companies to build the lunar lander needed for the Artemis 3 manned mission to the moon.

According to Reuters, the contract is targeted by Space Exploration Technology in 2021 and is currently worth $4.4 billion, with companies currently likely to ¡°robble¡± including Jeff Bezos¡¯s Blue Origin company.

NASA has asked Space Exploration Technology Company and Blue Origin to submit an accelerated lunar landing plan before the 29th of this month. Blue Origin is currently developing the "Blue Moon" lander for the later mission of "Artemis".

Musk responded via social media on the 20th, saying that compared with other American aerospace companies, space exploration technology companies "move as fast as lightning." "Starship will eventually undertake all the lunar landing missions. Remember my words." The Artemis 3 lunar landing mission involved in Starship is expected to be completed in 2027.

According to Reuters, in addition to Blue Origin, another American company has continued to conduct a lot of technical and procedural analysis on "manned lunar landers" this year, and is cooperating with companies from different industries to seek to achieve the goal of American lunar landing.

According to the company, the participating "Archimedes 2" mission, namely a manned 10-day flight around the moon, was originally scheduled to be carried out in April 2026, and is expected to advance until February (Oceans).