SpaceX puts Mars on back burner to focus on moon ‘city’, Musk says
After years of ambitious Mars predictions, Earth’s richest person admits the moon is more achievable in the shorter term
SpaceX is putting its long-standing focus of sending humans to Mars on the back burner to prioritise establishing a settlement on the moon, founder Elon Musk said on Sunday.
The South Africa-born billionaire’s space company has found massive success as a Nasa contractor, but critics have for years panned Musk’s Mars colonisation plans as overambitious.
The move also puts Musk in alignment with US President Donald Trump’s shift away from sending Americans to Mars.
The US faces intense competition from China in the race to return humans to the moon this decade. Humans have not visited the lunar surface since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
“For those unaware, SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon, as we can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years,” Musk said in a post on X, the social media platform he bought in 2022.
Difficulties in reaching Mars include the fact that “it is only possible to travel to Mars when the planets align every 26 months”.