NASA leader doubts Elon Musk will push Trump to axe moon rocket

NASA will not launch astronauts around the moon next year as planned, pushing the Artemis II mission back another six months to April 2026, space officials said Thursday.

The new timeline also will postpone the first human moon landing since Apollo 17 — Artemis III — to at least 2027. The announcement comes just a month before former President Donald Trump is expected to return to the White House for a second term. 

The announcement, coupled with the upcoming change in leadership, leaves concerns as to whether Trump will continue to support the federal agency's moon-to-Mars plans. Since his campaign, Trump has forged an unexpectedly close relationship with SpaceX founder Elon Musk. Some have wondered whether Musk's outsize influence will push the incoming president to cancel NASA's own Space Launch System rocket and spacecraft in favor of using SpaceX's own Starship. 

"It's a legitimate question that you're suddenly going to have Starship take over everything," said NASA administrator Bill Nelson, who will leave his post at the conclusion of President Joe Biden's term. 

The Artemis II mission is expected to build upon the success of Artemis I, an empty test flight of Orion that sent the moonship on a 1.4 million-mile voyage. The sequel mission will test-drive the spacecraft for about 10 days with human passengers, whizzing by the moon without ever landing on it.

The Artemis II crew, announced last year, includes NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Hammock Koch, along with the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen. 

The delays largely stem from an investigation into problems with the Orion moon capsule's protective heat shield, discovered after the spacecraft's uncrewed Artemis I flight in 2022. As the ship re-entered Earth's atmosphere for a splash down in the Pacific Ocean, the shield charred and eroded more than engineers had expected. 

As of Thursday, agency officials said they had determined the root cause of the damage. Rather than scrap the heat shield, though, the agency plans to change the reentry trajectory to avoid a recurrence. 

"While the capsule was dipping in and out of the atmosphere as part of that planned skip entry, heat accumulated inside the heat shield's outer layer, leading to gasses forming and becoming trapped inside the heat shield," said Pam Melroy, NASA's deputy administrator. "This caused internal pressure to build up and led to cracking and uneven shedding of that outer layer."

Nelson emphasized that the new schedule for Artemis would still position NASA to put boots on the lunar surface before China, which plans to send its own astronauts to the moon in 2030. 

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But the delays could be the tipping point for those on Capitol Hill who would like to rein in spending on the Artemis campaign and NASA generally. The agency's SLS, sometimes dubbed the mega moon rocket, costs about $4 billion each time it launches. Meanwhile, SpaceX's Starship, a much more powerful commercial rocket and ship, is making leaps in progress toward flight readiness. 

NASA is already paying SpaceX $4 billion to build a lander version of Starship to ferry astronauts from lunar orbit to the moon during the Artemis III and IV missions. But pressure may be mounting from lawmakers to switch horses in midstream, instead opting to outsource the entire journey to Starship. It's unclear whether Musk is jockeying for this outcome.

Nelson, who was asked Thursday if he was concerned about Musk's relationship with Trump, said he was "basically optimistic" that Musk's political activism would benefit NASA. He wouldn't speculate how the billionaire's new role as co-head of the so-called "Department of Government Efficiency" would impact NASA's overall funding and workforce. 

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Under Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX's chief operating officer, the commercial launch company has been a boon for the International Space Station, Nelson said, providing reliable rides for astronauts and cargo. 

"The proof's in the pudding," he said. "I have every reason to think that that relationship will continue." 

Just Wednesday, Trump's team announced his pick to replace Nelson at NASA's helm. The president-elect has tapped Jared Isaacman, CEO of Shift4 Payments and a friend of Musk. Isaacman has commanded two SpaceX missions, including Polaris Dawn this year. During that five-day spaceflight, Isaacman became the first person to perform a commercial spacewalk. 

Wiseman, the astronaut who will lead the Artemis II crew, has not been deterred by the schedule setbacks. He visited the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, last month and saw the Orion spacecraft and SLS's booster. Right after, he watched a livestream of Starship's sixth flight test on his phone. 

Suddenly, humanity's return to the moon seemed real. 

"All the elements are there for humans on the moon, and all the elements are there to push us on to Mars in the very near future," he told reporters. "I just — I felt it in my soul."