Distract, Divert, Defund Congress is none too pleased after Elon Musk declared that "the Moon is a distraction" and that NASA should instead be going "straight to Mars." As Politico reports, lawmakers who control NASA's budget are prepared to fight back against Musk's apparent plan to kibosh the space agency's forthcoming lunar landing in favor of his long-running Martian dreams.

Jeff Bezos, the second richest man in the world, successfully blasted off a 320-foot-tall rocket ship made by his Blue Origin company from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in the early hours of the morning. It made the company the first to successfully reach orbit on its first launch of an orbital-class rocket.

NASA has plans to return humans to the moon with the Artemis mission—but Elon Musk’s preference for Mars could have influence in the Trump administration.

Reid Wiseman, commander of NASA’s Artemis II mission to fly the agency’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with a crew around the Moon, stepped in to comment, saying while changes to NASA’s priorities are possible, NASA’s “two bosses” include the President and “ taxpayers—not companies .”

A switch to Mars would impact programs such as the moon-focused Space Launch System, a multibillion-dollar rocket that provides jobs in numerous states. The rocket is a key part of Artemis, NASA’s effort to get back to the moon and eventually establish a lunar space station.

Preliminary indication is that we had an oxygen/fuel leak in the cavity above the ship engine firewall that was large enough to build pressure in excess of the vent capacity. Apart from obviously double-checking for leaks, we will add fire suppression to that volume and… — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 17, 2025

Blue Origin's New Glenn finally roared into orbit in the early hours of Thursday, with SpaceX's Starship rocket set to launch hours later.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is calling for NASA to ditch its Moon program, arguing that the "Moon is a distraction" and that "we're going straight to Mars" instead in a recent tweet. In a separate tweet on Christmas Day,

The SpaceX Starship - developed by Elon Musk's aerospace company SpaceX - blasted off from Texas on Thursday for its seventh test flight, but it encountered difficulties

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, two tech moguls who have spent years battling it out for supremacy in the space race, seem to have buried the hatchet—at least, publicly. Their friendly exchange on social media following the results of their respective rocket launches marks a possible end to their long-standing rivalry.

SpaceX launched Starship on Thursday for a seventh test flight, after weather concerns pushed back an experiment that will feature the spacecraft’s first payload deployment test, and while it successfully caught the Super Heavy Booster, Starship lost connection and “experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly.”