Elon Musk’s dream of transporting humans to Mars will become a bigger national priority under US President-elect Donald Trump’s administration, sources said, signaling major changes to NASA’s moon program and a boost to Musk’s SpaceX company.
NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to use SpaceX’s Starship rocket to put humans on the moon as a testing ground for later Mars missions, is expected to focus more on the Red Planet under Trump and target unmanned missions there this decade, according to four people familiar with the matter. With Trump’s burgeoning space policy agenda.
Targeting Mars with spacecraft designed for astronauts is not only more ambitious than focusing on the Moon, but it is also risky and potentially more expensive.
Musk, who danced on stage at a Trump rally wearing an “Occupy Mars” T-shirt in October, spent $119 million on Trump’s White House bid and successfully promoted space policy at an unusual time in a presidential transition.
In September, weeks after Musk endorsed Trump, the latter told reporters that the moon was a “launching pad” for his ultimate goal of reaching Mars.
“At the very least, we’ll get a more realistic plan for Mars,” said Doug Lovero, a space industry consultant who once led NASA’s Human Exploration Unit under Trump, and who served as a space industry adviser. “You’ll see that Mars has been identified as a target.” President of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
The SpaceX, Musk and Trump campaigns did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A NASA spokeswoman said, “It would not be appropriate to speculate about any changes with the new administration.”
Get daily national news
Get the day’s top political, economic and current affairs news, headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day.
The sources added that plans may change with the formation of Trump’s transition team in the coming weeks.
Trump launched the Artemis program in 2019 during his first term and it was one of the few initiatives maintained under President Joe Biden’s administration. The sources said that Trump’s space advisors want to renew the program, which they say has weakened in their absence.
Musk, who also owns electric car maker TeslaTSLA.O and brain chip startup Neuralink, has made cutting government regulation and cutting bureaucracy another key basis of his support for Trump.
As for space, sources said, Musk’s desires for deregulation will likely prompt changes at the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space, whose oversight of private rocket launches has frustrated Musk with slowing development of SpaceX’s Starship vehicle.
The FAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
NASA under Trump would likely favor fixed-price space contracts that shift greater responsibility to private companies and scale back over-budget programs that have strained Artemis’ budget, the sources said.
That could spell trouble for the only rocket NASA has, the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which Boeing BA.N and Northrop Grumman NOC.N have led about $24 billion in development since 2011. Some say canceling the program would be difficult. Because it will cost thousands of jobs and make the United States more dependent on SpaceX.
Boeing and Northrop did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Musk, whose predictions have sometimes proven overly ambitious, said in September that SpaceX would land the spacecraft on Mars in 2026 and a crewed mission would follow within four years. Trump said at campaign rallies that he discussed these ideas with Musk.
Many industry experts see this timeline as unlikely.
“Is it possible that Elon could put a spacecraft on Mars on a one-way mission by the end of Trump’s term? He certainly could do it,” said Scott Pace, the top space policy official during Trump’s first term.
“Is this a manned mission to Mars? No,” Pace added. “You have to walk before you can run.”
