In his first term, President Donald Trump set his eyes on America’s “next frontier”: the moon, Mars and beyond.
“We will ensure a future of American dominance in space,” Trump said in a May 2020 speech at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The first-term president reestablished a White House space council, issued directives intended to jump-start U.S. space policy and urged Congress to fully fund his planned Artemis program, which would return American astronauts to the moon.
Now, some of Trump’s first-term space goals are becoming second-term realities, thanks in part to the four-year gap between his two administrations that allowed time for the initiatives to take root.
Trump is set to host the four astronauts from the Artemis II mission in the Oval Office on Wednesday afternoon, according to a White House schedule, three weeks after the NASA-led crew made history by flying the farthest distance from Earth by any humans.
The president has repeatedly touted the astronauts’ lunar flyby as a symbol of American ingenuity — as well as a stepping stone. NASA has planned three more Artemis missions before Trump’s term ends, including two trips to the moon in 2028. The second of those trips is intended to begin construction on a permanent lunar base.
“We’ll plant our flag once again, and this time we won’t just leave footprints, we’ll establish a permanent presence on the moon and we’ll push on to Mars,” Trump told the Artemis II astronauts — pilot Victor Glover, commander Reid Wiseman, and mission specialists Jeremy Hansen and Christina Koch — in a call after their lunar flyby this month. Trump also invited them to the Oval Office, saying he wanted to request their autographs after they had captured the world’s attention.
“I don’t really ask for autographs much, but you deserve that,” Trump added.
Space politics have helped shape Trump’s two terms in Washington, and not just because of the president’s ambitions. Billionaire entrepreneurs focused on the space industry, such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, have increasingly jockeyed for influence with the White House and sought to win major government contracts for their rocket companies.
Musk, who spent at least $288 million to help elect Trump and other Republican candidates in 2024, was initially given wide influence over administration policies last year before a falling out with the president. One factor in that fracture was a fight over who would lead NASA. The president eventually acceded to Musk’s wishes and picked his ally Jared Isaacman — again — after initially pulling Isaacman’s first nomination. Musk has since patched his relationship with Trump, and his company SpaceX is working to prove it is capable of carrying out a crewed Artemis mission to the moon.
Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, has also mended his relationship with Trump after the president repeatedly lambasted Bezos-owned companies in his first term. Since Trump’s 2024 election, Bezos has joined him for dinner at the president’s Mar-a-Lago estate and at several high-profile events, including Tuesday’s state dinner with Britain’s King Charles III and Queen Camilla.
Amazon, one of Bezos’s companies, spent tens of millions of dollars to pay for and promote a documentary, “Melania,” about the first lady. Meanwhile, his space company, Blue Origin, has ramped up spending on lobbying since Trump’s return to office and last year retained Brian Ballard, a Trump-connected lobbyist, to advocate for the company’s interests. Blue Origin is vying with SpaceX to potentially support a crewed Artemis mission to the moon.
Other countries are also increasingly focused on growing their space programs, part of a new space race. China has targeted 2030 to land its own astronaut on the moon.
The space program is among the more popular initiatives of Trump’s second term, and Democrats have joined Republicans to praise the success of the recent Artemis II mission. A YouGov poll this month found that 58 percent of Americans had positive views of the mission, with just 6 percent opposed, and the remainder neutral or unsure. Three-quarters of Americans also said they had pride in the U.S. space program, according to an Ipsos poll this month.
It was inspiring to watch the Artemis II launch yesterday — @NASA’s first crewed mission around the moon since 1972. Our space program has always captured an essential part of what it means to reach beyond what we thought was possible, and I hope the four brave astronauts on this… pic.twitter.com/fgNtlRRECV
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) April 2, 2026
Democrats have been unhappy with the Trump administration’s broader stewardship of NASA, however, criticizing decisions that led to thousands of civilian workers leaving the agency last year, and pledging to block new plans to cut the agency’s science funding. The frustrations spilled out this week in congressional hearings with Isaacman, who was on Capitol Hill to defend the administration’s proposed budget.
“NASA was left adrift in 2025 with political leaders who actively harmed NASA’s missions and set the agency back years by creating a massive brain drain,” Rep. Grace Meng (D-New York) told Isaacman on Monday, lamenting the Trump administration’s decisions. “No one up here holds you responsible for what happened before you were confirmed … but you must clean it up.”
Isaacman said the administration’s planned budget cuts would lead to a more narrowly focused, efficient NASA. He also warned that the vision of American space dominance was far from assured, given global competition.
“What you just saw Artemis II pull off, you’re going to see the Chinese do in the not-too-distant future,” he said.
The post Trump to host Artemis astronauts, as he eyes more trips to the moon — and Mars appeared first on Washington Post.
