Elon Musk Brings His Vision for Mars to NASA
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Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Wednesday, April 9th. I'm Victoria Craig for The Wall Street Journal. The future of American space exploration is in focus on Capitol Hill today. The man nominated to head up NASA begins his nomination hearing. But it's not just about him. It's about Elon Musk's involvement in the agency and a potential pivot to speeding up a manned mission to Mars.

Since President Trump took his seat behind the Resolute Desk at the White House again in January, Elon Musk has been constantly by his side. The tech billionaire's focus on Doge has been the most high profile of his tasks, and in the last few months he's worked to dismantle the federal bureaucracy and reduce costs.

He's also set his sights on NASA. He recommended friend and fellow billionaire Jared Isaacman to head up the American Space Agency, and on January 20th, Isaacman was officially nominated as NASA Administrator. At 10 a.m. Eastern today, he'll take the hot seat before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation in Washington to discuss his credentials and vision for the job.

According to his prepared testimony, during the hearing, Isaacman is expected to say he'll prioritize sending American astronauts to Mars while also getting the agency back to the moon. To find out more about Isaacman's background and how Musk is trying to make Mars a priority for NASA, we called up two of our reporters, Emily Glazer, who covers business leaders, power and influence for The Wall Street Journal, and Micah Maidenberg, who focuses on the business of space.

So the future of NASA seems to revolve around a billionaire friend of Elon Musk named Jared Isaacman. Emily, just introduce us to him. Who is he? What qualifications does he have to potentially head up the U.S. Space Agency? Right off the bat, he's someone that's been to space. He is a billionaire in his own right. He has a payments company, Shift4. And I would say most importantly in all of this, he's friends with Elon Musk.

We know that Elon Musk has played a very active role in President Trump's second administration. Why is it important to Elon Musk to have Isaacman in this role as head of NASA if he's confirmed?

So our reporting shows that Elon Musk has been installing loyalists in key roles in different agencies that regulate the space world. And one of those, of course, and the crucial one is NASA. So for Elon Musk to have a loyalist and friend in Jared Isaacman, potentially as administrator of NASA, just means that he would have power and influence at the very top of the place that is determining what kind of space programs are

happening.

Obviously, Congress is determining the budget, but this is the strategy around space exploration and the center and anchor of it all. So for Elon to have someone in there who is loyal to him is really crucial. Michael, walk us through what this appointment could mean for the space agency and why Mars exploration is also so important for Elon Musk. NASA has been working with a ton of U.S. contractors, including SpaceX, for many years to support

Explore deep space. That includes the moon and someday Mars. Right now, the moon is the near-term goal, and NASA currently wants to get astronauts down to the surface of the moon again in 2027. What our reporting shows is that some of the discussions would rethink that program. It's called Artemis, and it may end up having more of a focus on Mars sooner than

And that's something that Musk has been, of course, really obsessed with for many, many years, even decades, sending crews to Mars and setting up a self-sustaining settlement or community on the Red Planet. That is an extremely difficult goal that's been talked about in different settings for a long time. And many, many hurdles remain for it to become anywhere close to reality.

And I just want to dive into that a little bit because I think just this concept of what it takes to get to Mars might be fairly foreign for a lot of listeners. It certainly was for me because you had this –

Really great explanation about how long it takes astronauts to get from Earth to the moon and then how long it's really going to take them to get from Earth to Mars. When you talk about speeding up this process, really changing this focus for NASA, putting Mars at an earlier focus, just explain to us what that involves and what kind of commitment that takes.

When NASA decades ago was doing the Apollo moon landing, some of those trips to the moon and back were about a week or so. The moon is pretty close, relatively speaking, to the Earth. But Mars is way out there, much further away. And you have to try to launch missions to it when the Earth and Mars are closer to each other. So there's these windows where you can do that. And then it doesn't make sense to try in other windows because it's just that much further away.

NASA has various estimates on what it would take to get a crew out to Mars and back, and some of those indicate two to three years. So again, if you're sending people to the moon and something goes wrong, you're actually fairly close to trying to come up with a solution to solve that. But with Mars, it's much, much more difficult because it's just so much harder.

further away. I was at the World Economic Forum as President Trump gave his inauguration speech, and crucial to that was a line that said, we're going to plant a flag on Mars. And that week, I had interviews with heads of space agencies for different regions across the globe, and they were very quick to praise President Trump about this bold statement and that it was reminiscent of JFK and getting to the moon. And then when I asked, like, okay, so how do you

get to Mars? Like, how do you actually do this? And they were talking, just like Micah mentioned, it's extremely complicated. It's going to take years. And so when I asked them if they thought

that Elon Musk could do it and if it could happen under President Trump. No one wants to say no on the record, but folks were pretty skeptical. Coming up, the moon, Mars and beyond what NASA's next chapter of space exploration could look like under President Trump. We'll be back with Emily and Micah after the break. This message comes from Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort.

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Jared Isaacman will later this morning take his seat on Capitol Hill to talk about his vision for NASA under President Trump. Mars could be a bigger focus for the space agency, which has put instruments on the red planet, but never people.

Senator Ted Cruz, who heads up the Senate committee Isaacman will appear before today, posted on X this week that he met with Isaacman who, quote, committed to having American astronauts return to the lunar surface ASAP so we can develop the technologies needed to go on to Mars. Our reporters Emily Glazer and Micah Maidenberg explain what exactly it takes to get humans to Mars.

I think Elon Musk is the one who said that getting people to Mars would be President Trump's legacy. And that's the question really behind why Elon Musk wants to get involved. Is it that he already owns this rocket company, SpaceX, and so it would have a lot of involvement in NASA? Emily, can you kind of walk us through how SpaceX may be a beneficiary of this retooling? Our reporting shows that when Musk was kind of pitching this to President Trump, it was all about you can be the president to get to Mars. SpaceX

stands to benefit in a major, major way. It is already repositioning itself to focus on Mars. What we know from our sources is that SpaceX president Gwen Shotwell, Elon's number two, has told industry peers and others that she is focused on Mars. And so it would be

basically have the best advantage should all of these things go through with federal spending, with NASA's strategic decision-making, and ultimately putting federal money and priorities toward getting to Mars. SpaceX is basically like waiting in the wings, ready to rock and roll. And if we drill down a little bit into specifics when it comes to this Artemis program, part of that is

having SpaceX replace Boeing for some of these vehicles, I suppose. That was one of the big takeaways from the articles, the prospect that a Boeing-built rocket called Space Launch System may not survive. NASA has been working on this vehicle with Boeing and other contractors for years, and it's flown one time. It's quite expensive, but it also has a lot of support in Congress. And part of the challenge is there's no rocket right now to switch to at SpaceX. I mean, they have...

Starship, which is in development and has notched some advancements during its flight test campaign, but that is not an operational vehicle that has flown satellites, let alone human beings yet.

I mean, how likely is it that NASA retools away from something it's been focused on for decades and decides that it wants to focus on Mars? Not just that, but it wants to do it even faster than it's originally set out. What I think was really telling and what's included in this article is that a NASA spokeswoman said that it looks forward to its incoming administrator. This is a quote, setting an agenda that aligns with the bold vision President Trump and

outlined in his inaugural address. And they did say, in that spirit, we remain committed to advancing an ambitious strategy to return Americans to the lunar surface, reach Mars, and push the boundaries of exploration even further. So to me, that's a very telling on-the-record comment from NASA.

Yeah. So basically, what would this mean? What would this refocus if it happens on Mars rather than the moon? What could it mean for America's place in this new space race? Yeah, it's a big question. There are folks out there who would love to see the U.S. just focus on Mars and move the frontier of space exploration to sending humans to Mars and would say, look, we've gone to the moon before. We went to the moon decades ago.

And there are many other folks in and out of the space industry, Congress, etc., who really want to go back to the moon and very much want to make sure that the U.S. beats China in returning and taking astronauts to the moon again. So those kinds of debates and policy questions are going to be on the table here as we think about

or Mars or both. There's also folks who say the U.S. has to find a way to do both and like explore getting back to both places at the same time. We have, you know, scientific devices on the red planet right now. I mean, that's definitely happening. Taking humans there and doing it safely is orders of magnitude more difficult. SpaceX has been working toward some kind of crewed Mars mission for about

basically its entire history. It was founded to sort of do this. And SpaceX is going to try to mount some kind of mission with astronauts to Mars, no matter what NASA or the government does. That was WSJ reporter Emily Glazer, who covers business leaders for The Wall Street Journal, and Micah Maidenberg, our business of Space Reporter.

And that's it for Tech News Briefing. Today's show was produced by Jess Jupiter and Julie Chang with supervising producer Matthew Walls. I'm Victoria Craig for The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back this afternoon with TNB Tech Minute. Thanks for listening.

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