The announcement of his nomination comes more than five months after the President pulled it for largely political reasons.

Rocket Lab says it has paused launch operations after the government of New Zealand this week ordered most businesses closed and urged people to stay at home in an effort to combat the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

After a 24-hour delay due to poor weather, an air-launched Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket fired into orbit at 9:59 p.m. EDT Thursday (0159 GMT Friday) after release from a carrier jet at an altitude of 39,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean northeast of Cape Canaveral. The Pegasus rocket carried NASA’s ICON satellite into orbit to collect measurements of the ionosphere.