How Elon Musk plans to upend NASA

After tearing its way through the US government, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (or DOGE) is headed to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration — the source of about $15 billion of SpaceX’s public contracts. Musk may want to see humanity become a multiplanetary species, but that doesn’t mean he necessarily sees NASA as an ally in that mission.

On February 12, NASA acting administrator Janet Petro said that DOGE was going to look over the agency’s books and that hundreds of the agency’s staff had already accepted a buyout to leave the federal government. NASA has begun removing pronouns from workers’ emails and gutting diversity programs, in line with orders from the Trump administration. In an internal email less than a week earlier, Petro acknowledged that the changes were “weighing on many of you” but asked workers to take “some inspiration” from DOGE’s calls for efficiency.

It should come as no surprise that there are concerns about what Elon Musk plans to do with NASA given the power he’s seized over the US federal government. The ranking members of the Congressional committees dealing with space and science have already sent a letter to Petro expressing concern about Musk’s conflicts of interests and the potential for sensitive NASA data to be accessed by people who run SpaceX, but that’s unlikely to stop DOGE.

Despite relying so much on NASA for SpaceX contracts, Musk wants to transform the agency and better align it with his own priorities. Donald Trump nominated Jared Isaacman as its new administrator, a billionaire who’s paid for two private trips on SpaceX rockets. Isaacman is poised to help Musk achieve his vision and make sure the US space program becomes more dependent on his company.