Moon Or Mars? NASA's Future At A Crossroads Under Trump

Is NASA still Moonbound, or will the next giant leap mean skipping straight to Mars?

Speculation is mounting that the Trump administration may scale back or cancel NASA's Artemis missions following the departure of a key official and Boeing's plans to lay off hundreds of employees working on its lunar rocket.

Late Wednesday, NASA abruptly announced the retirement of longtime associate administrator Jim Free, effective Saturday.

No reason was given for Free's departure after his 30-year rise to NASA's top civil-service position. However, he was a strong advocate for Artemis, which aims to return crews to the Moon, establish a sustained presence, and use that experience to prepare for a Mars mission.

Though Artemis was conceived in President Donald Trump's first term, he has openly mused about bypassing the Moon and heading straight to Mars -- a notion gaining traction as Elon Musk, the world's richest person and SpaceX's owner, becomes a key ally and advisor.

Musk's SpaceX, founded to make humanity a multiplanetary species, is betting heavily on its prototype Starship rocket for a future Mars mission.

Trump has also tapped private astronaut and e-payments billionaire Jared Isaacman, a close Musk ally who has flown to space twice with SpaceX, as his next NASA chief.

Boeing this month told employees it could 400 jobs from the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket program to "align with revisions to the Artemis program and cost expectation."

"This will require 60-day notices of involuntary layoff be issued to impacted employees in coming weeks, in accordance with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act," the aerospace giant told AFP.

Boeing "saw the writing on the wall," Keith Cowing, a former NASA scientist and founder of NASA Watch, told AFP.

To date, SLS has flown just one mission -- 2022's uncrewed Artemis 1 -- and has proven exceedingly costly. It's "likely to fly only one or two missions, or they'll cancel it outright," Cowing added.

Skepticism about the exceedingly expensive SLS and the Orion crew capsule -- whose heat shield issues delayed future Artemis missions -- is widespread among space watchers.

Still, many advocate reform, not repeal.

"We need to stick with the plan we have now," Free said at an American Astronautical Society meeting in October.

"That doesn't mean we can't perform better... but we need to keep this destination of the Moon from a human spaceflight perspective. If we lose that, I believe we will fall apart and wander, and other people in this world will pass us by."

Space policy analyst Laura Forczyk noted Free had been in line to become NASA's interim administrator before being passed over in favor of another official, Janet Petro.

She warned that eliminating the Moon would remove a crucial testbed for technologies needed to ensure a safe Mars journey.

While Musk has called Artemis a "jobs-maximizing program" and said "something entirely new is needed," the initiative enjoys strong congressional backing.

It supports tens of thousands of jobs in states including Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida, with support from key Republicans, including Senator Ted Cruz.

Abandoning the Moon would also leave China unchallenged to plant its flag on the lunar south pole with a planned 2030 crewed mission.

Forczyk believes Artemis is more likely to be reformed than scrapped, with SLS potentially limited to one or two flights before private companies -- such as SpaceX or Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin -- assume key roles.

"However, the Trump administration is unpredictable, and we really cannot get in the minds of Donald Trump or Musk," she told AFP.

Another looming uncertainty has been how Trump's broader effort to downsize the federal government could affect NASA.

A NASA spokeswoman told AFP on Thursday that about five percent of the workforce had accepted a "deferred resignation" offer allowing them to remain on administrative leave while continuing to receive pay until September.