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Elon Musk says SpaceX is shifting its focus from Mars to lunar cities.
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Musk said he prioritized development on the moon because the launch cycle is faster than on Mars.
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Last week, Musk announced that SpaceX had acquired his artificial intelligence company xAI.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX just overhauled its to-do list.
The CEO said in an X post on Sunday that the company is shifting its focus from Mars to creating a “self-growing city” on the moon.
“Traveling to Mars is only possible when the planets align every 26 months (six months travel time), whereas we can launch to the moon every 10 days (two days travel time),” Musk wrote. “This means we can iterate on a lunar city much faster than a Martian city.”
The news is a sharp departure from Musk’s previous remarks about reaching the Red Planet this year.
In 2020, the SpaceX CEO said he was confident the company would send humans to Mars by 2026.
“Maybe four years if we’re lucky,” Musk said at an awards ceremony in 2020. “We hope to send an unmanned aerial vehicle there in two years.”
The aerospace company has historically delayed ambitious projects due to their complexity and regulatory challenges. Last week, the company postponed its Artemis 2 mission, the first human mission to the moon in more than 50 years.
Mars is still part of the plan
In a post on Sunday, Musk added that SpaceX will continue building a Martian city within five to seven years.
“But the most important thing is to ensure the future of civilization, and the Moon is faster,” he wrote.
Last week, Musk announced that SpaceX would acquire xAI, the artificial intelligence company behind his chatbot Grok. XAI acquired social media platform X in March 2025.
The CEO wrote that SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI will create “the most ambitious, vertically integrated innovation engine on Earth (and beyond), including artificial intelligence, rockets, space-based internet, direct-to-mobile communications and the world’s foremost platform for real-time information and free speech.”
In the memo, Musk shared plans to build a “self-development base” and factories on the moon. He also mentioned that “there is an entire civilization on Mars.”
Read the original article on Business Insider
