The fate of NASA’s long-developed and much-delayed lunar program could depend on the whims of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk. And with Musk already critical of NASA’s heavy-lift rocket program and Congress’ lunar ambitions, lawmakers are preemptively coming to the program’s defense.
Members of Congress from both parties take deep pride in NASA’s Space Launch System, a hulking 322-foot rocket that has launched one test flight ahead of a manned mission set for next year. Musk, who has a vested interest in space as chief executive of SpaceX and sweeping latitude to reshape the government, has long been a critic of the Space Launch System and finds manned missions to the moon “a distraction.”
The split comes at a time when some Republicans are urging Musk to scale back cuts ordered by his Department of Government Efficiency amid blowback from constituents. GOP lawmakers, many of whom rely on the Space Launch System to deliver jobs in their states and districts, told NOTUS they appreciated Musk’s thoughts but are dead set on forging ahead with their lunar program.
“I understand what Musk has said publicly, and I love what he’s done at SpaceX, but at this point, the Congress has spent the money,” Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee Chairman Mike Haridopolos told NOTUS. “They’re on schedule to launch in early 2026 and if that happens, I think we’re on our way in Artemis III to land people on the moon.”
After a decade of development, the Space Launch System sent an unmanned Orion spacecraft around the moon and back during the Artemis I flight in November 2022, and is progressing towards a second flight that would send four astronauts around the moon and back next year, barring further delays or the program’s cancellation.
“I think we’re in good shape,” Haridopolos said. “Now, if they do not meet their schedule in 2026, there could be a big push to maybe go in a new direction, but until we find out with Artemis II … I don’t think you can jettison that program.”
Trump, for his part, has taken a far keener interest in American spaceflight since Musk joined his presidential campaign, flying to Texas to watch a test flight of SpaceX’s heavy lift Starship rocket and publicly echoing Musk’s ambitions to reach Mars.
“We will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars,” Trump said at his inauguration, a sentiment he repeated in his joint address to Congress.
Some of Trump’s space interest has been focused on the captivating story of the two astronauts stuck aboard the International Space Station — on Thursday he said he asked Musk to “do me a favor” and return them to Earth. (Such a mission was already in the works.)
“They’ve been left up there,” Trump said. “I hope they like each other. Maybe they love each other, I dunno. I see the woman with the wild hair. Good, solid head of hair she’s got. There’s no games with her hair.”
Trump didn’t mention NASA’s lunar ambitions during his inauguration speech or his joint address to Congress. And there are other warning signs that suggest changes to the project may be on the way. Boeing employees working on the Space Launch System were warned last month that layoffs of up to 400 workers could be imminent, Bloomberg first reported, and sources told Reuters that Trump was being advised to axe the program entirely.
Rep. Rich McCormick, another Republican on the space subcommittee, said he would oppose Trump canceling the Space Launch System.
“The government needs to invest in technology,” McCormick said. “We are the leaders in innovation traditionally, we don’t want to lose that place.”
Lawmakers also expressed worry at the prospect of Musk using his influence in the Trump administration to steer the U.S. lunar program away from the Space Launch System and toward Starship, which is launching test flights at a far greater pace despite recent setbacks.
“It’s always been a worry, especially with what we see Elon Musk doing,” said Democratic Rep. Eric Sorensen, who served on the subcommittee last Congress. “The world’s richest person, the unelected billionaire, has so much control over our government. What does he want to do? Does he want to be the CEO of NASA? I don’t know.”
Other lawmakers are making pleas for the administration not to skip past the moon entirely.
“One of my greatest concerns is that NASA astronauts will arrive at the moon only to be greeted by a sign that says no trespassers, in Mandarin,” GOP Rep. Brian Babin said during a subcommittee hearing last month.
Sen. Ted Cruz, who chairs the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, said the tens of billions already spent on developing the Space Launch System make it worth continuing.
“We have a financial investment, and I think it is critical not to abandon projects that we have invested significant amounts into and that are important parts of the architecture for returning to the moon and going to Mars.”
Starship is already set to play a role in the Artemis program. In 2021, SpaceX won billions in federal funding to deliver the program’s lunar lander, a modified version of Starship dubbed the Human Landing System. But senators like Mark Kelly, himself a former NASA astronaut, argue that returning to the moon would not be feasible without the Space Launch System.
“We still need to move SLS forward,” Kelly told NOTUS. “The mission right now is to send people to the surface of the moon. In my view, you can’t do that without SLS and Orion.
“Starship is not far enough along, especially when you consider, if you want to try to use it to get people back from the moon and reenter Earth’s atmosphere, there’s engineering issues associated with that,” Kelly said.
Whereas capsule spacecraft like Orion use parachutes to land softly in the ocean, the 171-foot Starship upper stage relies on a powered soft landing, falling nearly all the way back to Earth’s surface on its stomach before relighting its engines to flip the spacecraft and land upright — a maneuver SpaceX has pulled off with varying degrees of success across its test flights.
The rocket’s last two test flights saw Starship fail to reach orbit and break up over the Caribbean, prompting the Federal Aviation Administration to divert flights and halt takeoffs from some Florida airports.
Jared Isaacman, the billionaire SpaceX astronaut nominated by Trump to lead NASA, has been deeply critical of the way Congress approached funding the Space Launch System and how it doles out related contracts.
“The government is lousy at capital allocation & big prime contractors are incentivized to be economically inefficient and abusive,” Issacman said in a 2023 post. “A program, like SLS, that was outrageously expensive but tolerable because, ‘hey everyone wins’, quickly becomes underfunded or cancelled during different times with a different administration.
“The result, our children don’t get to see many moon landings and the dream of an enduring lunar presence fades away for many more decades,” he added.
Musk’s thoughts on the Space Launch System are peppered throughout his X page.
“SLS makes me feel sad,” Musk wrote in one post. “Fundamental issue with SLS is that it’s not reusable, which means that a billion dollar rocket is blown up every launch!” read another.
His idea for an alternative: his own company.
“Starship can also be used to create a large, permanently crewed Moon Base Alpha research station,” Musk wrote.
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Mark Alfred is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. Helen Huiskes, a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow, contributed reporting.