Elon Musk’s dream of sending humans to Mars will become a bigger national priority under the administration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, sources said, which could lead to major changes for NASA’s moon program and Musk’s push to boost SpaceX. There is a signal.
NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to use SpaceX’s Starship rocket to land humans on the Moon as a proving ground for later Mars missions, is being phased out under Trump with a greater focus on the Red Planet and this, according to four people familiar. Unmanned missions are expected to be targeted there in the decade. With Trump’s growing space policy agenda.
Targeting Mars with a spacecraft built for astronauts is not only more ambitious than focusing on the Moon, but also fraught with risk and potentially more expensive.
Musk, who danced on stage at a Trump rally in October wearing an “Occupy Mars” T-shirt, spent $119 million on Trump’s White House bid and has successfully stepped up space policy at an unusual time of presidential transition.
In September, a few 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’re going to get a more realistic Mars plan, you’ll see Mars being set as an objective,” said space industry consultant Doug Loverro, who once worked at NASA under Trump. Who served in this position. US President from 2017 to 2021.
SpaceX, Musk and the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A NASA spokesperson said, “It would not be appropriate to speculate on any changes with the new administration.”
Plans could still change as Trump’s transition team takes shape in the coming weeks, the sources said.
Trump launched the Artemis program in 2019 during his first term and it was one of the few initiatives created under President Joe Biden’s administration. The sources said Trump’s space advisers want to revamp the program which they argue has slowed in his absence.
Musk, who also owns electric-vehicle maker Tesla and brain-chip startup Neuralink, has made cutting government regulation and cutting bureaucracy another mainstay of his Trump support.
As for space, the sources said, Musk’s deregulation desires are likely to lead to changes in the Federal Aviation Administration’s Commercial Space Office, whose oversight of private rocket launches has frustrated Musk for slowing SpaceX’s Starship development.
The FAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
NASA under Trump, the sources said, is likely to favor fixed-price space contracts that put more responsibility on private companies and reduce overpriced programs that have strained the Artemis budget.
That could spell trouble for the only rocket owned by NASA, the Space Launch System rocket (SLS), whose nearly $24 billion development since 2011 has been led by Boeing and Northrop Grumman. Some say it would be difficult to cancel the program because it would lead to the loss of thousands of jobs and make the US even more dependent on SpaceX.
Boeing and Northrop did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Musk, whose predictions have sometimes proven overly ambitious, said in September that SpaceX would land Starship on Mars in 2026 and launch a crewed mission in four years’ time. Trump has said at campaign rallies that he has discussed these ideas with Musk.
Many industry experts consider this timeline impossible.
Scott Pace, the top space policy official during Trump’s first term, said, “Is it possible for Elon to send a Starship to the surface of Mars on a one-way mission by the end of Trump’s term? Absolutely, he certainly could.” Are.” ,
“Is this a manned mission to Mars? No,” Pace said. “Before you can run you have to walk.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
