WASHINGTON — President Trump says a human mission to Mars is of interest to him but is not a “number one” priority, amid concerns about potential sweeping budget cuts at NASA.
Near the end of an interview broadcast by Fox News March 9, Trump was asked about comments he made both in his inaugural address Jan. 20 and before a joint session of Congress March 4 that appeared to support sending humans to Mars, presumably in the near future.
“We are going to conquer the vast frontiers of science, and we are going to lead humanity into space and plant the American flag on the planet Mars and even far beyond,” Trump said in the speech to Congress.
“There’s a lot of interest in going to Mars,” Trump said in the interview, but acknowledged it was not necessarily a high priority for him. “Is it number one on my hit list? No. It’s not really. But it is something that would be, you know, it would be a great achievement. It would be a great thing if we could do it.”
He argued that his comment in the Congressional speech got some of the biggest applause of the night. “I was shocked,” he said. “There seems to be a big interest in it.”
Although Trump has mentioned his interest in Mars missions in those speeches, he has yet to provide any more details. That includes any information on budgets and schedules for the effort, and how they might affect NASA’s existing Artemis lunar exploration campaign.
However, a human Mars landing during Trump’s second and final term in office is effectively impossible. The next window for sending missions to Mars opens in the fall of 2026, and even SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk, a close adviser to the president and major advocate for human Mars missions, said that his company would be ready, at best, to send only uncrewed Starships to Mars in that window. The following window, in late 2028, would allow a landing in 2029, after Trump leaves office.
A human Mars mission, regardless of the launch schedule, would…
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