As Elon Musk, DOGE dive into NASA spending Katie Britt says Redstone Arsenal is critical
Elon Musk’s DOGE staff wasted no time since arriving at NASA this week, analyzing workforce data and, according to a top space agency official, pledging a deep-dive audit of spending and contracts.
But Musk’s work may also force a showdown with Republican legislators whose districts benefit from NASA, especially the $93 billion Artemis program aimed at putting American boots back on the moon.
Musk’s DOGE review at NASA is in its early stages and it’s not yet clear how deep or sweeping any changes will be. It’s a measure of this political moment that Musk, whose company SpaceX has billions of dollars of contracts with NASA, is now rooting through its books for waste.
See also: Katie Britt among GOP leaders speaking out over DOGE cuts
To critics including Musk, Artemis, which has been riddled with cost overruns and technical delays for years, is a powerful emblem of government inefficiency. DOGE’s slash-and-burn track record at other U.S. agencies and Musk’s criticism of Artemis are reasons NASA employees are bracing for change.
Here’s another: President Donald Trump has picked billionaire SpaceX investor and astronaut Jared Isaacman to run NASA. Isaacman has criticized cost overruns and technical delays with Artemis and the Boeing-built rocket underpinning it.
The growing speculation gripping Washington that an Artemis shake-up is coming is forcing Republicans to choose between their allegiance to the Trump administration and their support of a program that props up tens of thousands of home-state jobs — setting the stage for a major budget battle in Congress.
A number of GOP lawmakers are rallying around the program, warning that cutting Artemis would put the U.S. in a weaker position in its space race with China. Beijing plans on sending its astronauts to the moon for the first time by the end of the decade.
“The first thing we need to do is establish what’s in the best interest of the United States of America, and that is beating the Communist Party back to the lunar surface,” Texas Republican Brian Babin, chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, told a conference in Washington on Feb. 12.
“The only way that’s going to happen at any time soon is with Artemis,” he said.
A NASA spokesperson confirmed DOGE workers are at the agency and referred all further questions to DOGE. The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
“They are going to look — similarly to what they’ve done at other agencies — at our payments,” NASA’s acting administrator Janet Petro told reporters on Wednesday. Department of Government Efficiency personnel have already mapped NASA’s management and employee structure, including average age, tenure and salaries.
Launched by NASA during Trump’s first term, Artemis is expected to cost $93 billion by 2025 and has only flown a single mission, making it an obvious target for cost-cutters. NASA has delayed the first moon mission with astronauts several times, most recently announcing in December that the landing on the lunar surface won’t take place until 2027.
Despite the program’s setbacks, Congress has funneled billions of dollars to the program for years, in part to protect local economies.
Development of Boeing’s Space Launch System rocket and Lockheed Martin Corp’s Orion crew capsule supports tens of thousands of jobs in Republican-controlled states like Texas, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida.
“The Artemis architecture is extremely inefficient,” Musk posted on his X social-media platform in December. “It is a jobs-maximizing program, not a results-maximizing program. Something entirely new is needed.”
Musk’s SpaceX though plays a key role in Artemis, building a lunar lander under a multibillion-dollar NASA contract.
Even if DOGE doesn’t suggest sweeping changes to the Artemis program, Trump’s incoming political appointees could also be the ones to dismantle NASA’s moon program through discussions with the Office of Management and Budget. It will ultimately come down to Congress — which funds NASA — to approve of any proposed changes to specific programs.
Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican who is chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, told the same Washington conference on Feb. 12 he plans on reintroducing a NASA Authorization bill “very soon” that will mandate no changes to Artemis for at least a year.
But under the new administration, a historic shift might be underway as Republican lawmakers fall in line with Trump and his agenda. While some lawmakers like Cruz and Babin are still championing NASA’s marquee moon mission, others are embracing Musk’s efforts to shrink the U.S. government, even if it comes at the cost of jobs in their constituencies.
“I think that his involvement is great,” said Sen. Rick Scott, a Florida Republican, in an interview. ”I think we ought to figure out how to do things the most efficient way we can.”
Streamlining the Artemis program should include cuts at NASA, according to Florida’s Mike Haridopolos, a freshman GOP representative whose district includes the Kennedy Space Center.
“I’m a space supporter proudly, but remember when we have a $2 trillion budget shortfall, there’s going to be reductions in workforce,” he said. “The president has given a lot of people a lot of parachutes to get out and that’s going to include people at NASA.”
Some lawmakers caught in the middle, like Sen. Katie Britt, are treading delicately between their two priorities. The Artemis program employs roughly 22,000 people in Alabama, many of them concentrated at the Redstone Arsenal Army base near Huntsville.
“Obviously President Trump and his team, we’re going to be taking a look across the board at where we can do things better and more efficiently,” Britt said. “But I have every faith that the work that is done there at Redstone Arsenal is not only critical to our nation’s defense, but to future exploration.”
(Loren Grush contributed to this report.)
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