NASA and the future of America’s space exploration plans are in a strange place at the moment. Not only have we seen sweeping changes at NASA—including pauses of key scientific committees due to executive orders signed by President Trump—but there are many questions surrounding the future of the Artemis missions, humanity’s highly anticipated return to the Moon.
It’s been over 50 years since humanity scurried across the surface of our lunar satellite. NASA’s Artemis missions were meant to once more cross that off our space exploration bucket list, even going so far as to explore the lunar south pole—an area of the moon we know very little about.
However, Trump’s success at winning a second term, plus moves that seem to point towards SpaceX taking over more of America’s space-related contracts, could completely toss the future of the Artemis missions off course.
Don’t get me wrong—NASA is already extremely off-course with these missions. Artemis II was originally scheduled to launch in late 2024. However, it was then delayed until the fall of 2025 before being pushed back to 2026 at the earliest.
The second mission of a proposed multimission campaign, Artemis II, wouldn’t have even put boots on the lunar surface. Instead, it would have sent the Orion capsule around the moon. We weren’t actually scheduled to return to the surface of the moon until Artemis III.
However, with Trump scoring his second term and Musk taking such a close advisory role to the President, NASA’s future plans for the Artemis missions could be scrapped completely in favor of a much bigger plan—getting humans to Mars.
Now, the goal of putting humanity on the Red Planet isn’t new, either. Elon Musk has been talking about this for years at this point. It’s the entire reason SpaceX designed and built Starship—its biggest and most powerful rocket system to date. NASA also wanted to put humans on Mars with a manned mission to our neighbor sometime in the 2030s.
But given Trump’s talk about wanting to put Americans on Mars and SpaceX’s plans, it’s very likely we could see all American space exploration efforts pivot to focus on that one goal. But getting to the Red Planet isn’t as simple as sending humanity to the Moon.
For starters, future Artemis missions will be a lot more feasible. We’ve already proven we can go there for one. Sure, that might take away some of the excitement. But, considering it’s been five decades and entirely new generations have been raised since then, it’s hard not to be in awe of the goal.
But sending humans to the moon also comes with a lot fewer challenges than sending them to Mars. Not only do you need to contend with the long travel times associated with sending humans to Mars—it’s roughly 6 months of traveling in space to get there—but you also have to contend with the medical concerns.
See, scientists just aren’t convinced space is very good for humans. Aside from the whole lack of oxygen thing, space is also free of gravity, which means the human body comes under a lot of stress because of those changing conditions. And recent studies have shown some concerning possibilities of kidney damage caused by space travel.
There’s also the whole muscle atrophy issue that comes from the lack of gravity, and while there are pieces of equipment that can help astronauts keep their bodies in some shape, it’s not quite the same as being on Earth and having the pull of gravity against your body.
NASA has also been conducting simulation studies to see how astronauts might handle the long stints required for space travel to Mars. Isolation and how it might long-term affect astronauts’ mental health are huge medical concerns, which is why these kinds of simulations are important.
If Musk and Trump do push for a mission to Mars—potentially by 2029, according to some reports—then we’d need to cut through a lot of these cautionary strategies. Not to mention, SpaceX would need to get Starship ready. Considering the history of Starship launches so far, that will be a job in and of itself. But it could happen, as the engineers at SpaceX are exceptionally good at what they do.
Exactly what the future of NASA’s Artemis missions looks like is still unclear. But right now, everything we’re seeing points at some bigger changes coming to the space agency and the possible cancellation of this and other high-profile missions that have been in the works for years.
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