SpaceX CEO Elon Musk stated on Sunday that his company had “shifted its focus” from sending humans to Mars to constructing a “self-expanding Moon city,” a project he believes could be realized in under a decade.
He clarified that the company hasn’t given up on its Mars colonization plans but emphasized, “The top priority is safeguarding civilization’s future, and the Moon is a quicker path.”
“You can only travel to Mars when the planets align every 26 months (with a six-month journey), while we can launch to the Moon every 10 days (a two-day trip). This allows us to iterate far more quickly to finish a Moon city compared to a Mars city,” Musk .
“SpaceX’s mission hasn’t changed: to expand consciousness and life as we understand it to the stars,” he noted.
This isn’t the first instance of Musk adjusting his timelines, making overly ambitious promises, or reversing course on creating humanity’s next habitat.
As recently as January of last year, Musk , “No, we’re heading directly to Mars. The Moon is a distraction.”
A brief history of Musk’s shifting Mars plans
Musk has long expressed his intention to establish a self-sufficient Mars colony, describing it as SpaceX’s core objective since the company’s 2002 founding.
In 2016, he aimed to send at least one million people to Mars and build a self-sustaining city, projecting the first human mission might occur in 2024.
He mentioned a new rocket fleet would journey to Mars roughly every two years, during the periods when Mars and Earth are nearest.
“My main goal here is to make Mars feel achievable—like something we can do in our lifetimes, and that you could be part of,” Musk stated.
In 2017, Musk even again cited an early target for the first human Mars landing, while NASA’s own estimate for a crewed Mars mission was 2034.
At an event detailing SpaceX’s Mars colony plans, Musk said the first uncrewed missions might happen in 2022.
“That’s not a mistake, though it is an ambitious goal,” he told the conference, referring to the 2022 timeline. “I can’t imagine anything more thrilling than venturing out and being among the stars,” he added.
In 2020, the SpaceX CEO reaffirmed his commitment to the mission, stating he was confident the company would land humans on Mars by 2026.
“With luck, maybe in four years,” Musk said during a December award show webcast from Berlin. “We plan to send an uncrewed vehicle there in two years.”
In his TIME Magazine interview for , Musk repeated his Mars objectives, telling TIME he’d “be shocked if we aren’t landing on Mars within five years,” despite experts doubting the practicality of his aggressive schedule.
That timeline has clearly changed in recent years, as Musk wrote on in March 2025 that an uncrewed Starship would soon leave for Mars, laying groundwork for human missions.
“If those landings are successful, human landings could begin as early as 2029, though 2031 is more probable,” he stated in a post.
In September 2025, he repeated that SpaxeX would create a “self-sustaining” Mars colony, which he described as .
TIME has contacted SpaceX to ask about Musk’s Mars-related predictions and priorities.
A space race
Musk’s announcement coincides with NASA’s plan to send four astronauts on a crewed lunar flyby via the Artemis II mission set for , the first crewed deep-space flight in more than 50 years. Artemis III will follow, using Artemis II as a precursor.
For these missions, SpaceX holds a nearly $3 billion contract to develop NASA’s lunar lander—the vehicle that will transport crew from their spacecraft to the Moon’s surface. This lander, SpaceX’s Starship, is still in the early stages of development and has yet to reach orbit.
Over the past year, Musk and the U.S. government have clashed over space priorities, with Musk labeling lunar missions a “distraction” last year.
Sean Duffy, Trump’s Secretary of Transportation who briefly acted as NASA Administrator, warned late last year that he might exclude SpaceX from the landing mission to favor Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin.
“They keep delaying their timelines, and we’re in a race with China,” Duffy told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” in October 2025. “So I’m going to open the contract up. I’ll let other space companies compete with SpaceX.”
In a separate October interview with Fox News’ “Fox & Friends,” Duffy stated he was working to open the Artemis lunar landing contract to other firms.
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin revealed just last month that it’s halting its space tourism operations—which took celebrities like William Shatner, Michael Strahan, Katy Perry, and around 90 others to the edge of space—to focus on NASA contracts and the lunar landing. While Blue Origin was initially set to build a lander for the Artemis V mission (slated for no earlier than 2030), it’s now in the running for the Artemis III lander.
Bezos seemingly reacted to Musk’s Moon city announcement with a on X, sharing a tortoise image—likely a nod to Blue Origin’s motto “gradatim ferociter” (Latin for “step by step, ferociously”) and its logo with two tortoises. This philosophy is a sharp contrast to Musk’s frequently cited “fail fast” mantra.
