2025: A Space Odyssey – SpaceX’s Latest Venture

March 17th, 2025

Brogan Jones

Elon Musk’s close relationship with the new Trump administration has shone a spotlight on all of his business endeavors, of which there are many. Looking past his other popular ventures like Tesla, X (formerly Twitter), OpenAI, and Neuralink, Musk is also the founder, CEO, and chief engineer of SpaceX, a company dedicated to the exploration of space. Founded in 2002 and based in Texas, the company is one of Elon Musk’s passion projects. With a modern space race rapidly emerging among global superpowers, Elon Musk’s role as a senior advisor to President Trump has only tilted more eyes to the skies, awaiting Musk’s vision for U.S. policy on space exploration. The earliest indication of how Musk will use his newfound stellar power came this past week, as SpaceX sent a group of astronauts to the International Space Station, with the hopes of closing the book on a nine-month long space controversy.

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have been 'stranded' in space for nine months following a trip on a faulty Boeing starliner. The trip was originally only meant to last a week, but their prolonged stay was caused by a malfunction that transpired with the experimental capsule they arrived in. Now, despite an initial delay in the launch and an untimely explosion, a SpaceX capsule successfully docked at the International Space Station with a team of astronauts ready to replace Wilmore and Williams. The NASA-SpaceX mission was spearheaded by a Falcon 9 rocket, with the vessel entitled ‘Dragon’ lifting off Friday evening from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The total number of people aboard the ISS will temporarily increase to eleven, that is until the astronauts and cosmonauts apart of Crew-9 return to Earth following the crew handover period.

Originally, the stranded astronauts were meant to come home sometime between late March and early April, but Trump vowed to move up their return date. That decision, and the rhetoric surrounding the stranded pair of astronauts, did not come without its political messiness, however. Trump referred to the duo’s lengthy galactic vacation as a failure of the Biden administration, claiming that the decision to leave the two in space was politically motivated. In addition to that remark, another comment that Trump made that garnered a lot of media attention was when he stated "maybe they'll fall in love", referring to the pair of stranded astronauts aboard the ISS. Despite the political implications of the astronauts’ overstayed welcome, both Wilmore and Williams have chosen not to engage in any political conversations surrounding their time in space.

Importantly, SpaceX’s Dragon’s launch into space is not strictly a rescue mission. In fact, it’s not even primarily that. The capsule that arrived at the ISS will not be the one Wilmore and Williams will be returning home in. Instead, they’ll be returning to Earth in a capsule that has been attached to the station since September of last year, when it brought two new crew members to the ISS. The two astronauts could have returned home in the capsule at any point in the last six months. However, they instead integrated as a part of the new crew, taking on leadership roles and continuing their work. Their hesitance to return to Earth was what initially gave rise to Musk and Trump’s theory that their prolonged stay was a political stunt orchestrated by the Biden administration.

With the turmoil of the past seemingly on its way out, what does the future of space exploration look like? And how will SpaceX help shape that? While that remains to be seen, Musk has high hopes for the company moving forward. The billionaire CEO expressed his desire to send SpaceX to Mars, and possibly a human mission as soon as 2029. Only time will tell if the senior advisor to the President will fulfill his promises, but if his early actions are any indication, it seems Musk’s plans for the final frontier are anything but final.