President Trump Calls Mars Mission ‘Manifest Destiny’ in Nod to Elon Musk’s SpaceX

In his inauguration speech on Monday, President Donald Trump endorsed a mission to Mars, calling it a part of America’s “manifest destiny” to explore the stars and set foot on Mars, a nod to SpaceX CEO and top donor Elon Musk.

Trump’s Mars declaration was a part of his broader vision for the next four years of his second term, emphasizing national expansion and ambition.

“The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation, one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations, and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons,” Trump told the audience. “We will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars.”

Manifest destiny is the 19th-century doctrine that the expansion of the U.S. throughout the American West was justified and inevitable. Musk, for his part, was over the moon during a speech at the post-inauguration Trump rally.

“Can you imagine how awesome it will be to have American astronauts plant the flag on another planet for the first time?” Musk asked the audience

While Trump’s speech inspired excitement among his supporters and space enthusiasts, scientists like Bruce Jakosky, a planetary scientist and professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, caution a Mars mission is fraught with challenges.

“We’re more or less on track with the Artemis program to land on and explore the Moon,” Jakosky told Decrypt. “There’s a real danger in switching goals mid-program, which includes if we’re going to stop plans for the Moon and start-up plans for Mars.”

Scrubbing the upcoming Moon mission in favor of Mars, Jakosky said, would also waste taxpayer money, something Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, better known as DOGE, is meant to combat.

“That would mean that we would have wasted much effort and money on a program that we would be abandoning and that we would be starting a new program from scratch,” he said.

Jakosky, who is also the principal investigator of NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission, emphasized the importance of lunar exploration as a precursor to Mars.

“Going to Mars will be extremely difficult. We’re relying on experience at the Moon to help set the stage for going to Mars,” he said. “If Trump is suggesting that we’re going to abandon going to the Moon, then that’s going to make going to Mars much more difficult.”

This is not the first time a U.S. president has prioritized space exploration.

In the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy’s iconic speeches ignited the Apollo program, leading to NASA’s historic Moon landing in 1969.

However, unlike the Apollo era, modern space exploration relies heavily on private companies, such as Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Since 2007, Musk has publicly stated his goal to reach and colonize Mars.

As Jakosky explained, several crucial factors must be considered and worked out before a realistic plan for Mars can be implemented.

“Key issues include returning Mars samples to Earth, assessing hazards from radiation or soil, and developing planetary-protection protocols,” he said. “Addressing these issues through the robotic program will add value and inform the human-mission architecture.”

Despite Musk’s optimism, setbacks remain. On Thursday, SpaceX’s plans suffered a blow when its Starship rocket exploded over Turks and Caicos during a test flight. Musk later attributed the failure to an oxygen leak.

But will Trump’s endorsement of a Mars expedition lead to actual results or political posturing?

“Clearly, broad goals are set politically. This has included programs like the Apollo program, the International Space Station, Artemis, and so on,” Jakosky said. “But I hope that the details of the program would be left to experts—you would want experts to design the hardware, develop science goals, and so on.”

For now, America’s path to Mars remains uncertain. The balance between ambition, science, and political willpower will determine whether Trump’s vision becomes a reality or fades into rhetoric.

“The bottom line is that everything we can say today is speculative based on a lack of specific or detailed information,” Jakosky said.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair