No president since the Apollo era has pushed harder to return to the moon than President Trump. But he wants a space achievement that is about “more than getting rocks this time.”
Jared Isaacman was in his office in mid-January, barely a month into his job as NASA administrator, when his cellphone rang.
“Jared, I want to check in with you,” said President Trump, as Mr. Isaacman recounted the conversation. “Are we doing something in the 2028 window for Mars? What do you think about the nuclear rocket?”
Mr. Isaacman’s agency is on the verge of one of the most momentous space landmarks of the modern era: the launch of Artemis II, a mission that is set to propel astronauts farther from the planet than any human beings have traveled in history as they loop around the moon. And yet the president was instead focused on what would come next.
Mr. Trump, who turns 80 this year, grew up in the days of Apollo, when spacefarers voyaged to another world and fired imaginations back on the one they left behind. Mr. Trump, however, wants to top the achievements of Apollo 11 and its brethren. A moon base! A nuclear rocket! A trip to Mars! And whatever it will be, it has to be huge, and it has to get started before he is due to leave office in January 2029.
The man who slaps his names on buildings and dreams of adding his face to Mount Rushmore hopes to make history by pushing space exploration to new heights, literally and figuratively. No president since NASA’s glory days under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson has pressed the space agency as hard as Mr. Trump.
The upcoming launch of Artemis II will be the first step in the journey. Four astronauts are scheduled to fly to the moon as soon as Wednesday, the first humans to travel there in the more than half a century since the end of the Apollo program.
