Africa-Press – Mozambique. Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk said on Feb 8 that SpaceX has shifted its focus to building a “self-growing city” on the Moon, which he said could be achieved in less than 10 years.
SpaceX still intends to start on Mr Musk’s long-held ambition of a city on Mars within five to seven years, he wrote on his X social media platform, “but the overriding priority is securing the future of civilisation and the Moon is faster”.
Mr Musk’s comments echo a Wall Street Journal report on Feb 6 stating that SpaceX has told investors it would prioritise going to the Moon first and attempt a trip to Mars at a later time, targeting March 2027 for an uncrewed lunar landing. As recently as 2025, Mr Musk said he aimed to send an uncrewed mission to Mars by the end of 2026.
The US faces intense competition this decade from China in its effort to return astronauts to the Moon, where no humans have gone since the final US Apollo mission in 1972. Less than a week ago, Mr Musk announced that SpaceX had acquired the AI company he also leads, xAI, in a deal that values the rocket and satellite company at US$1 trillion (S$1.27 trillion) and the artificial intelligence outfit at US$250 billion.
Proponents of the move view it as a way for SpaceX to bolster its plans for space-based data centres, which Mr Musk sees as more energy efficient than terrestrial facilities as the demand for computing power soars with AI development.
SpaceX is hoping a public offering later in 2026 could raise as much as US$50 billion, which could make it the largest public offering in history.
Earlier on Feb 8, Mr Musk shared the company’s first Super Bowl ad, promoting its Starlink Wi-Fi service.
Even as Mr Musk reorients SpaceX, he is also pushing his publicly traded company, Tesla, in a new direction.
After virtually building the global electric vehicles market, Tesla is now planning to spend US$20 billion in 2026 as part of an effort to pivot to autonomous driving and robots.
To speed up the shift, Mr Musk said in January that Tesla is ending production of two car models at its California factory to make room for manufacturing its Optimus humanoid robots.
