February 10, 2026 — 6:21am Save Adam wants to live on the moon – and he’s spending millions to get there But the truth is that there was virtually no way that SpaceX would get to Mars this year, certainly with Starship. While Musk made the claim just a year ago, it was always an extremely unrealistic deadline — even for a man who’s built his reputation and considerable wealth around setting moonshot expectations. Some of the reasoning is purely planetary. As Musk wrote in his post, Earth and Mars only align once every two years, meaning there was only a narrow window when the company could launch Starship this year to reach the Red Planet. But the giant rocket remains under development, with its path to becoming operational marred by unplanned explosions both in flight and on the ground. Musk has been signalling since the fall that the moon would become more of a focus for the company, especially as SpaceX turns to the CEO’s latest grand vision: building out massive data centres in space to do complex computing for artificial intelligence, funded by the largest-ever initial public offering. Musk has hinted at a future where SpaceX could launch data centre satellites from the moon’s surface, and he began talking about plans to build a lunar base — dubbed Moon Base Alpha. Advertisement Even before the data centre discussion got into full swing, the moon was already part of SpaceX’s overall agenda. Starting in 2021, the company has held a contract with NASA, now valued at as much as $US4 billion, to land astronauts on the moon’s surface with the help of Starship for the agency’s Artemis program. Still, the Red Planet isn’t entirely off the agenda, and Musk said that SpaceX “will also strive to build a Mars city and begin doing so in about 5 to 7 years,” according to his post. “But the overriding priority is securing the future of civilisation and the Moon is faster.” A SpaceX rendering of life on Mars. The company has long had plans to establish a colony on the red planet. NYT Even so, Musk’s comments are an about-face from proclamations he made back in January 2025, when he called the moon a “distraction.” That statement came right after Donald Trump was reelected US President, and the two men began collaborating closely. Trump had even mentioned sending humans to Mars during some of his early speeches. Since then, however, Musk and the president have lived through a tumultuous relationship, including a public falling out, before reconciling again. Advertisement SpaceX rival Blue Origin has also signalled that it’s putting a greater emphasis on its lunar ambitions. The company announced recently that it would be pausing its iconic space tourism flights to space in order to focus on building out a lunar lander for NASA. View post on X