By Joey Roulette and David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump’s pick to lead NASA will tell senators on Wednesday that the agency will prioritize an astronaut mission to Mars, while noting that most U.S. space programs are over budget and behind schedule.
“We will prioritize sending American astronauts to Mars. Along the way, we will inevitably have the capabilities to return to the moon and determine the scientific, economic, and national security benefits of maintaining a presence on the lunar surface,” said Jared Isaacman, a 42-year-old billionaire entrepreneur, in written testimony for his U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation confirmation hearing on Wednesday.
Reuters reported on Monday that Isaacman told Senate staff last week that returning humans to the moon before China sends its own astronauts there is a national imperative. His remarks allayed some concerns that NASA’s multibillion-dollar moon effort could be upended by Trump and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s focus on Mars as a top destination for U.S. astronauts.
NASA’s Artemis moon program was spawned by Trump in his first presidential term as an effort to speed up the U.S. return to the moon, which would be used as a proving ground for eventual, farther-off missions to Mars.
After his assurances to lawmakers about the moon strategy, Isaacman’s written testimony raises questions on whether his prioritization of Mars would affect NASA’s existing moon missions or represent a rebranding of the program to give Mars a more central emphasis in the space agency’s strategy.
The billionaire nominee’s stance on the program is expected to be a major topic during his Senate hearing on Wednesday.
The agency has committed billions of dollars to its moon program, involving U.S. allies and leaning heavily on dozens of private companies – including Musk’s SpaceX – that have set their sights on a future lunar marketplace.
But in his second term, Trump has fixated on Mars in public remarks, while Musk, who spent $250 million in support of Trump’s presidential campaign and pushed for Isaacman’s nomination, openly considers the moon a distraction from his ultimate goal to send crews to the Red Planet.
Those views, as well as Musk’s critiques of established NASA contractors like Boeing and Northrop Grumman, which play key roles in the Artemis program, have put the agency’s primary and over-budget moon rocket on thin ice, with its future uncertain under a NASA led by Isaacman.
That rocket, built by Boeing and Northrop and called the Space Launch System, has cost NASA over $20 billion in development, an amount expected to more than double throughout its future missions sending astronauts toward the moon. Its first and only launch was in 2022 – a successful uncrewed test – after years of delays.
Isaacman in his testimony said delayed and over-budget NASA programs are “discouraging.”
“This is discouraging because people look up at the stars and wonder what is out there today, not decades down the road,” his testimony said.
(Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington and Joey Roulette in Colorado Springs; Editing by Sandra Maler)
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