WASHINGTON — The person nominated but not confirmed to be NASA’s chief financial officer (CFO) in the first Trump administration is getting another shot in the second administration.
The White House submitted to the Senate March 24 the nomination of Greg Autry to be the agency’s CFO, misspelling his name as “Autrey.” It was one of dozens of nominations the White House submitted the same day for various posts in the federal government.
The nomination is considered “privileged,” a category used for positions like agency CFOs and assistant secretaries that allows for a more streamlined confirmation. Privileged nominations do not require a confirmation hearing or vote by the relevant committee, in this case the Senate Commerce Committee, unless a senator requests it. The nomination can be taken up directly by the full Senate once it receives biographical and financial information from the nominee.
Autry was nominated to be NASA’s CFO in July 2020, several months after the departure of Jeff DeWit. The Senate Commerce Committee advanced his nomination that December, nearly a month after a confirmation hearing, but the full Senate did not take up the nomination.
Autry is currently the assistant provost for space commercialization and strategy at the University of Central Florida, and previously held academic posts related to space at Arizona State University and the University of Southern California. He was part of the first Trump administration’s NASA transition team, serving as White House liaison at NASA early in that first term before returning to academia.
“With his previous experience as the White House liaison during President Trump’s first administration, as well as his extensive experience in space policy, I look forward to welcoming Greg as our next CFO,” Janet Petro, NASA’s acting administrator, said in an agency statement March 25 about Autry’s nomination.
“If confirmed, we will work together with the current Trump administration to ensure NASA’s success in maximizing efficiencies, refining our processes, and remaining effective stewards of every tax dollar invested in our agency,” she added.
Autry has been a staunch advocate of commercial approaches for spaceflight, arguing they can enable increased capabilities at lower costs. That was a point he made in a March 19 speech at the American Astronautical Society’s Goddard Space Science Symposium, where he argued that broader fiscal pressures, from entitlement programs and servicing the national debt, would squeeze NASA’s budget.
“We have to do more science with less dollars,” he said. “That’s going to happen whether it’s this administration or another administration. This is the reality we face.”
One approach he offered was for researchers to work with companies developing satellite constellations to add scientific payloads to those spacecraft. “You’re going to have a lot of satellite platforms up there, and there’s no reason, perhaps, they could not have scientific instruments attached to these commercial satellites,” he said. The concept of such hosted payloads has been around for years, but there has been little progress flying them on any scale.
Advocacy for Isaacman
The position of chief financial officer is one of the few at NASA that requires Senate confirmation. The Trump administration has yet to nominate individuals to be the agency’s deputy administrator or inspector general, the latter a post that has been vacant at NASA since late 2023.
The nomination of Jared Isaacman to be NASA administrator, formally submitted Jan. 20, remains pending in the Senate, with the Senate Commerce Committee yet to schedule a confirmation hearing. There has been increasing pressure on the committee to take up the nomination, including a letter from nearly 30 former NASA astronauts publicly released March 21 asking the committee to hold a confirmation hearing “as soon as practical.”
The Commercial Space Federation (CSF), an industry group, is also asking the committee to take up Isaacman’s nomination. “With decades of experience as an entrepreneur, business leader, and commercial space pioneer, Mr. Isaacman is ideally suited to lead NASA at this critical time in the agency’s history,” Dave Cavossa, president of CSF, wrote in a letter to the committee released by the organization March 25.
One key House member recent said he wants a confirmed administrator in place at NASA soon. “We need to make sure that we get a confirmed administrator as soon as possible. That is super important,” said Rep. George Whitesides (D-Calif.), vice ranking member of the House Science Committee, during a Planetary Society event March 24.
