WASHINGTON — President Trump says a human mission to Mars is of interest to him but is not a “number one” priority, amid concerns about potential sweeping budget cuts at NASA.

Near the end of an interview broadcast by Fox News March 9, Trump was asked about comments he made both in his inaugural address Jan. 20 and before a joint session of Congress March 4 that appeared to support sending humans to Mars, presumably in the near future.

“We are going to conquer the vast frontiers of science, and we are going to lead humanity into space and plant the American flag on the planet Mars and even far beyond,” Trump said in the speech to Congress.

“There’s a lot of interest in going to Mars,” Trump said in the interview, but acknowledged it was not necessarily a high priority for him. “Is it number one on my hit list? No. It’s not really. But it is something that would be, you know, it would be a great achievement. It would be a great thing if we could do it.”

He argued that his comment in the Congressional speech got some of the biggest applause of the night. “I was shocked,” he said. “There seems to be a big interest in it.”

Although Trump has mentioned his interest in Mars missions in those speeches, he has yet to provide any more details. That includes any information on budgets and schedules for the effort, and how they might affect NASA’s existing Artemis lunar exploration campaign.

However, a human Mars landing during Trump’s second and final term in office is effectively impossible. The next window for sending missions to Mars opens in the fall of 2026, and even SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk, a close adviser to the president and major advocate for human Mars missions, said that his company would be ready, at best, to send only uncrewed Starships to Mars in that window. The following window, in late 2028, would allow a landing in 2029, after Trump leaves office.

A human Mars mission, regardless of the launch schedule, would have to overcome many technical challenges, from landing large vehicles on the surface of Mars than can be refueled for trips home to keeping astronauts alive for missions lasting up to three years.

Space policy, including human space exploration, has not been a “number one” priority for administrations of both parties dating back decades. In a statement issued by the White House about Trump’s Fox News interview, his comments of space were not included among the nine bullet points summarizing the interview.

The interest in Mars comes as many in the scientific community are concerned about the potential for major budget cuts to NASA’s science programs. A report March 7 said that the White House, as it prepares its fiscal year 2026 budget proposal, would seek to cut the agency’s $7.3 billion science budget in half.

Sources offer conflicting views on how series the administration is regarding that magnitude of a cut, but even the potential of a major cut has alarmed scientists and advocates.

“Such a substantial collapse of funding could functionally surrender American leadership in scientific space exploration,” The Planetary Society said in a March 7 statement. “Should these cuts come to pass, the result would be nothing short of an extinction event for space science and exploration in the United States.”

“If such cuts were to be implemented, they would have a devastating impact on our country’s scientific workforce and research infrastructure, and they would represent an abject surrender of US scientific leadership to our international competitors,” the American Astronomical Society said in a March 7 statement, expressing concerns about cuts to both NASA and the National Science Foundation.

Asked about the reports at a March 7 briefing about the upcoming launch of NASA’s SPHEREx and PUNCH science missions, an agency official dismissed them as speculation.

“I think it’s fair to say, right now, all of the articles talking about potential budget cuts are just speculation,” said Mark Clampin, acting deputy associate administrator for science at NASA. “We have no guidance as yet, so we are continuing to do the science that we do every day at NASA.”

“I don’t know anything about those supposed cuts, but the President said he’s targeting fraud, waste & abuse w/ a scalpel—not a hatchet. People shouldn’t waste heartbeats on rumor and speculation,” posted Jared Isaacman, Trump’s nominee to be NASA administrator, on social media March 8. He didn’t elaborate on what “fraud, waste and abuse” he saw at the agency.

In an earlier social media post, Isaacman suggested he supported cuts to some science programs. “Personally, I think there is a lot of taxpayer-funded science that should be reviewed & potentially reduced,” he said, but did not give any examples. He added, though, that NASA’s work on planetary defense “seems disproportionately underfunded relative to the likelihood and magnitude of the associated risks & consequences.”

Those comments came during heightened interest in planetary defense given the small but non-zero chance the asteroid 2024 YR4 would strike the Earth in December 2032. Subsequent observations have refined its orbit, yielding a risk of an impact that is now about one in one million.

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