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Elon Musk Calls Out NASA’s Moon Ambitions: ‘We’re Going Straight to Mars’

NASA has plans to return humans to the moon with the Artemis mission—but Elon Musk’s preference for Mars could have influence in the Trump administration.

This is understandable from a financial perspective, as SpaceX has contracts worth billions of dollars to not only build a Human Landing System as part of the Artemis program but also to supply food, cargo, and other logistics services to a planned Lunar Gateway in orbit around the moon. But privately, Musk has been critical of NASA's plans, suggesting that the Artemis Program has been moving too slowly and is too reliant on contractors who seek cost-plus government contracts and are less interested in delivering results. These are definitive statements that directly contradict NASA's plans to send a series of human missions to the lunar south pole later this decade and establish a sustainable base of operations there with the Artemis program.

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