The billionaire's influence over space policy, already strong under outgoing President Joe Biden, will most likely deepen in what many analysts believe will be a year of still more space initiatives being undertaken by the private sector. Meanwhile, the budget and performance of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration will come under more intense scrutiny.
Indeed, NASA's incoming administrator, Jared Isaacman, another billionaire and close associate of Musk's, has hailed the expansion of the "space economy," meaning the business of spaceflight and exploration as practiced by private companies such as SpaceX and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin.
The latter company, as well as other commercial competitors, including one from China, could give SpaceX a run for its money during 2025, not only in terms of government contracting for manned space exploration, but also when it comes to the satellite communications field, which has long been the space economy's bread-and-butter.
The defense sector also could see some highly significant space developments during the year, including Trump's stated desire to establish a Space National Guard, while longer-range plans to explore -- and possibly colonize -- Mars will continue to play out over the next 12 months.
Starship, at 400 feet high, is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, and is designed to help mankind settle the moon and Mars. SpaceX has said it wants to eventually conduct multiple Starship launches per day.
In a draft decision filed by the FAA, the agency granted the company's request to "increase the launch and landing cadence of the Starship/Super Heavy launch vehicle" at its Starbase site in Cameron County, Texas.
The decision allows SpaceX to raise the number of annual Starship liftoffs there by a factor of five, to 25 from the currently allowed five.
Included in that number are up to 25 annual Starship/Super Heavy orbital launches and up to 25 annual landings of Starship, which the company says are "critical to continually develop the core design of the launch vehicle, which is rapid reusability."
Musk could have great influence over the FAA and other U.S. regulatory agencies in his new role as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, under Trump. The only questions that seemingly remain are how much influence he will have and how will he wield it to remove further regulatory hurdles?
SpaceX Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell has voiced ambitious goals, stating at the 31st Annual Baron Investment Conference in November the company is aiming to conduct 400 Starship launches over the next four years and thus fundamentally change the character of space travel.
Shotwell "expressed hope" that the Trump administration and Musk's DOGE will push for "regulatory reforms across industries," leading space industry analysts to predict that their close relationship will benefit SpaceX with more favorable regulations and faster approval processes.
Earlier this month, NASA pushed back its next two launches after studying the causes of unexpected charring to the heat shield of the unmanned Artemis I in 2022. The crewed Artemis II mission was delayed to April 2026 from a hoped-for September 2025 launch, while Artemis III -- which is to land the first woman and next man on the moon -- is now slated for mid-2027.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said engineers needed time to prepare the heat shield on the Orion capsule, which requires modifications to safely re-enter the Earth's atmosphere, as well as to "address the Orion environmental control and life support systems."
During 2025, analysts believe White House support for Artemis will continue, but may be accompanied by major reviews and reconsideration of its key elements that are delayed, overbudget or both.
That includes Artemis' massive Space Launch System rocket, which from its inception in 2006 through 2023 has cost $23 billion to develop, but remains the only launch vehicle potentially capable of sending astronauts to the moon.
Meanwhile, the Orion deep space capsule that is designed to ride atop the SLS has required $20.4 billion during that period, which critics, including Nelson, have blamed NASA's "cost-plus" contracts, which incentivize suppliers to go over budget.
As the agency's new administrator, billionaire Isaacman could go after such cost overruns, or perhaps even seek to eliminate NASA programs such as the SLS that compete with Musk's private Starship program.
Canceling the SLS, however, would require congressional approval. That might prove difficult because it retains the support of some key Republican lawmakers.
Isaacman, founder and CEO of Shift4 payments and leader of the first all-civilian space flight into orbit, said he is hoping to "usher in an era where humanity becomes a true spacefaring civilization."
Assuming he is confirmed by the Senate, what his remarks mean in practice for the U.S. space program remain to be seen, but in all likelihood, it portends even greater cooperation between the government agency and private sector players like Musk.
In his comments, Isaacman referenced the "thriving space economy -- one that will create opportunities for countless people to live and work in space."
The National Space Society hailed his coming appointment, saying he brings "a wealth of experience in entrepreneurial enterprise, as well as unique knowledge in working with both NASA and SpaceX, a perfect combination as we enter a new era of increased cooperation between NASA and commercial spaceflight."
But are Isaacman's ties to Musk and the private space economy sector too close for ethical comfort?
In an editorial on Isaacman's appointment, the Houston Chronicle predicted ethics watchdogs "will be keeping close tabs on how SpaceX stands to benefit as a space contractor" under his leadership and reported that "many space policy experts expect Trump to make NASA even more dependent on the commercial sector," perhaps by eliminating the SLS.
"It would be a national security risk for the country to be overly dependent on SpaceX and Musk to reach space," the newspaper said.
Amazon in August announced a $19.5 million expansion of a still-under-construction Florida processing facility for its ambitious Project Kuiper, through which its aims to build a constellation of more than 3,200 satellites to increase global broadband access.
The first two Project Kuiper test satellites were launched in 2023, and Amazon said it plans to invest more than $10 billion in the project. Construction is forecast to be complete in 2025, and before the year is out, Amazon expects to "begin delivering service to customers."
Space economy analysts say Amazon's effort could pose the sternest test yet to the dominant market position of Musk's Starlink satellite broadband service.
More competition during 2025 will come from China's Thousand Sails, or Qianfan, constellation. It is being rolled out in phases, including an initial phase of nearly 1,300 satellites, some 648 of which are planned for launch by the end of the end of the year.
The full constellation of more 15,000 satellites traveling in low-altitude orbits are to be deployed by the end of 2030, according to the Shanghai city government, which is leading the effort.
Despite a late start, "China is rapidly advancing in building satellite constellations, particularly in the commercial sector, and catching up with global competitors," the Chinese Communist Party organ Global Times proclaimed.
Seemingly heading in the opposite direction, however, is Boeing's Starliner in the wake of its failed mission to bring two astronauts home from the International Space Station in September. Whether it would fly again in 2025 seemed unlikely until NASA revealed in October that it could carry out its next mission sometime during the year.
"The timing and configuration of Starliner's next flight will be determined once a better understanding of Boeing's path to system certification is established," NASA said. "This determination will include considerations for incorporating Crew Flight Test lessons learned, approvals of final certification products and operational readiness."
That document calls for the U.S. Space Force to institute "offensive" strategies to provide a "deterrent" capability in space against anti-satellite nuclear weapons reportedly under development by Russia.
One of the goals stated in the conservative roadmap is to "re-establish offensive capabilities to guarantee a favorable balance of forces, efficiently manage the full deterrence spectrum, and seriously complicate enemy calculations of a successful first strike against U.S. space assets."
One area that almost certainly will receive more funding is the Space Force's Resilient Global Positioning System, or R-GPS. It is designed to "provide resilience to military and civil GPS user communities" by augmenting the existing civilian GPS constellation with new batches of small satellites meant to counter jamming threats by adversaries.
The first of three phases to produce up to eight R-GPS satellites available for launch as soon as 2028 already is underway. Contracts for the first phase were awarded by the Space Force in October.
Meanwhile, 2025 could be the year Trump establishes a Space National Guard after setting the Space Force in his first administration. On the campaign trail in August, he promised the creation of such a force.
"The time has come to create a Space National Guard as the primary combat reserve of the U.S. Space Force," he said at the National Guard Association of the United States conference in Detroit. "So as president, I will sign historic legislation creating a space National Guard."
A 2021 analysis by the White House Office of Management and Budget estimated that it would cost $500 million annually to establish a Space National Guard, prompting the Biden administration to block earlier proposals, but proponents say a smaller version could be much more feasible and cost-effective.
"If those all land safely, then crewed missions are possible in four years," he wrote. "If we encounter challenges, then the crewed missions will be postponed another two years."
The billionaire's ambitious timeline for manned missions to Mars and his oft-stated dreams of humans colonizing the Red Planet have drawn plenty of skepticism, even as The New York Times reported in July he has directed SpaceX employees to develop designs and details of a Martian city, and that he now expects 1 million people to be living there in about 20 years.
One such skeptic is former President Barack Obama, who at the Paris POwR.Earth Summit in March criticized efforts by billionaires like Musk and Bezos to plant human colonies on Mars as a means to escape environmental degradation on Earth, even though the Red Planet has no breathable atmosphere.
"I would rather us invest in taking care of this planet here," Obama said. "We were designed for planet Earth, and it would be nice to keep it! Even in the event of nuclear war or global warming, Earth will always be more suitable for humans than Mars.
"Life will adapt and continue here, and we should invest now so that we can continue to live well here."
Still, as he did when he was president, Obama supported continuing to explore Mars for scientific and research purposes, and NASA has more plans to do so in 2025.
The space agency has two planned Mars-related efforts on tap: the second of three Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analogs, or CHAPEA, which are simulated one-year Mars missions meant to help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet; and two identical Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorer spacecraft, or ESCAPADE -- an unmanned mission to study how the solar wind interacts with Mars' magnetic environment.
The latter project, being undertaken in conjunction with Blue Origin, was originally set for an October opportunity window, but was delayed, with the next available window coming in spring 2025.
Also, NASA could have a new strategy for returning rock samples collected by the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover in place sometime during 2025. A prior plan that would have cost $11 billion and delayed the core samples' return to Earth until 2040 was scrapped in April. Nelson said he wants any new plan to accomplish that mission in the 2030s.
The coming year also will see the repurposing of the crashed Ingenuity helicopter. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in December that Ingenuity, whose final flight came on Jan. 18, 2024, could live on as a Mars weather station for another 20 years.
The helicopter still beams weather and avionics test data to the Perseverance rover about once a week, JPL scientists noted in a blog post.
"The weather information could benefit future explorers of the Red Planet," they wrote. "The avionics data is already proving useful to engineers working on future designs of aircraft and other vehicles for the Red Planet."
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