As Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House next week with Elon Musk at his side, the pair are planning to write the next chapter in US spaceflight history with an ambitious agenda that includes the first human footprints on Mars.
How many of their grandiose aspirations get cemented into official US space policy and what gets left on the launchpad remains to be seen. But analysts envision a lively few years from the partnership between Musk, the enthusiastic billionaire founder of SpaceX, and Trump, who exploited US achievements in space during his first term for some jingoistic flag-waving.
