NASA chief Jared Isaacman says Texas may get a moonship, not space shuttle Discovery

Houston, we may have a problem … for your senators’ plans to bring a NASA space shuttle to Texas.

NASA’s new chief Jared Isaacman said a controversial proposal to move the space shuttle Discovery to Texas from its current home on display at a Smithsonian Air and Space Museum hangar in Virginia, may end with a different spacecraft entirely landing in Houston.

“My predecessor has already selected a vehicle,” Isaacman said of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who led NASA as acting chief until this month, in a CNBC interview on Dec. 27. “My job now is to make sure that we can undertake such a transportation within the budget dollars that we have available and, of course most importantly, ensuring the safety of the vehicle.” Isaacman officially took charge at NASA on Dec. 18, a day after being confirmed by the Senate.

The plan to move space shuttle Discovery, NASA’s most-flown orbiter, to Houston was originally laid out by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). The Texas senators included a provision for the move in the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law over the summer.

Cruz and Cornyn have said that Houston, home to NASA’s Johnson Space Center where astronauts train and Mission Control is located, should have its own iconic human spaceflight vehicle on display. Discovery flew 39 space missions between 1984 and 2011, when NASA shuttered the shuttle program.

NASA’s other retired shuttles – Atlantis, Endeavour and Enterprise test vehicle, which never reached space – are on display at museums in Florida, California and New York City, respectively. Two other shuttles, Challenger and Columbia, were lost in tragic space accidents in 1986 and 2003, respectively.

But there’s a catch to moving Discovery. (Several of them, actually.) NASA gave the shuttle to the Smithsonian outright in 2012, so moving it to Houston would require the government to claw back the orbiter.

And there’s the cost. The One Big Beautiful Bill set aside $85 million to cover the cost of Discovery’s move, but critics have said that budget pales in comparison to the actual funds needed to move the 100-ton spacecraft safely, as well as construct a building for its final display. Officials with the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, where Discovery is currently on display, estimate it would cost up to $150 million alone just for the move.

Finally, there’s the question of how to physically move the space shuttle.

Discovery is 122 feet (37.2 meters) long and has a wingspan of 78 feet (23.8 m). NASA originally flew the shuttle to the Udvar-Hazy center atop a Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (a modified Boeing 747 jumbo jet), then used a series of cranes to hoist the orbiter to the ground. The agency’s two Shuttle Carrier Aircraft have since been retired, one of which is on display at Space Center Houston with a mock shuttle atop it.

Smithsonian officials have said Discovery may have to be partially dissassembled to move it to Houston, risking substantial damage to the spacecraft.

With all that as background, Isaacman told CNBC that assuring the safety of Discovery and weighing the costs of a move to Houston will factor into deciding whether NASA will actually push for the shuttle’s relocation.

“And if we can’t do that, you know what? We’ve got spacecraft that are going around the moon with Artemis 2, 3, 4 and 5,” Isaacman told CNBC.

NASA is currently preparing to launch four Artemis 2 astronauts around the moon as early as February 2026. The space agency hopes to launch its Artemis 3 moon landing mission by 2028. Both missions and their follow ups on Artemis 4 and Artemis 5 would send astronauts to the moon using an Orion spacecraft, which will launch on a giant Space Launch System rocket.

“One way or another, we’re going to make sure the Johnson Space Center gets their historic spacecraft right where it belongs,” Isaacman said.