NASA is considering launching missions to Mars as early as next year to accelerate its plan to land astronauts on the Red Planet. The unexpected shift in emphasis comes less than a week after the U.S. administration unveiled the agency’s proposed budget, which emphasizes the national goal of landing a man on Mars.
The space agency is exploring the possibility of launching multiple missions to Mars in the near future to accelerate the timetable for landing a human on Mars, Politico reports. “We are evaluating every opportunity, including launch windows in 2026 and 2028, to test technologies that will allow us to land people on Mars,” Politico quoted NASA spokeswoman Bethany Stevens as saying. The exact details of these missions, such as the rocket and payload, are not disclosed.
Last Friday, President Donald Trump’s administration released its proposed NASA budget for fiscal year 2026, which emphasizes “the goals of returning to the moon before China and landing a man on Mars.” The proposed budget is 24% less than NASA’s current FY2025 budget of $24.8 billion, and most programs faced budget cuts, with the exception of NASA’s human space exploration budget, which received an additional $647 million compared to the FY2025 budget. The Trump administration has allocated an additional $1 billion in new investments for Mars-focused programs. The proposed budget also includes cuts to NASA’s Mars Sample Return Mission, indicating that the plan to return rock samples from Mars using a fleet of robots could be realized with a human mission.
If NASA were planning to launch a mission to Mars by next year, SpaceX’s Starship megaship would be the most suitable for the job. SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk is obsessed with Mars, and he often talks about his plans to colonize the planet so that humans can become a multi-planetary species. Recently, Musk said that the Starship should be launched to Mars by the end of 2026, and human missions to the Red Planet will take place as early as 2029.
Musk’s obsession with Mars seems to have led to a change in the direction of NASA under the Trump administration, of which the rocket billionaire is a close ally. So far, Starship has completed a total of eight test flights, and it is showing steady progress. This week, the Federal Aviation Administration granted SpaceX a license to launch up to 25 times a year from Starbase, a significant jump from the previous limit of five launches per year.
This development will help move Starship forward, although it is unclear whether it will be ready to launch to Mars by next year. Launching a mission to Mars is not something that can be planned on a whim – there are many factors to consider, such as rocket readiness and orbital mechanics.
SpaceX’s Starship rocket is likely to be the best launch vehicle for these missions. To reach Mars, the Starship will have to perform a complex orbital refueling that will help it go beyond Earth’s orbit. This is no small feat, and SpaceX is still a long way from demonstrating this capability in space.
For the mission not to be too risky, at least one unmanned predecessor landing is required first – and this should happen in a window starting in late 2026, as the Economist notes.
It remains to be seen whether NASA and its partners will be able to meet these challenges. Regardless of whether the race to Mars is heating up – whether it is realistic or not.
