HOUSTON (VINnews) – NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said Sunday the odds of eventually finding evidence of alien life are “pretty high.”

Isaacman, a billionaire private astronaut appointed by President Trump to lead the space agency, made the remarks during an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” with host Jake Tapper.

“It goes to the heart of many things we do at NASA,” Isaacman said. “Our job is to unlock the secrets of the universe and one of those questions is: are we alone?”

He added: “I would say the odds that we will find something at some point to suggest that we are not alone are pretty high.”

Isaacman noted he has traveled to space twice and has not encountered any signs of extraterrestrial life or evidence of visits to Earth by intelligent beings. But he pointed to the vast scale of the universe — with an estimated 2 trillion galaxies — as reason for optimism about discovering signs of life.

The comments come days after the launch of the Artemis II mission, which sent a crewed spacecraft around the moon. Isaacman has linked the search for life to NASA’s broader scientific and exploration goals, including planned Mars sample return missions. He has previously expressed roughly 90% confidence that evidence of past microbial life on Mars will be found once samples are analyzed on Earth.

Isaacman’s appointment and the ongoing Artemis program have drawn attention amid renewed focus on U.S. space efforts under the Trump administration. No definitive evidence of extraterrestrial life has been confirmed, but NASA continues to fund astrobiology research targeting potentially habitable environments in the solar system and beyond.