U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk watch the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket in Brownsville, Texas, on Nov. 19, 2024.
Brandon Bell | Via Reuters
President Donald Trump‘s new administration is likely to do away with the White House’s National Space Council, a cabinet policy panel that lobbyists at Elon Musk‘s SpaceX have been pushing to axe, according to three people familiar with the plans.
Trump’s aides and SpaceX’s top lobbyist Mat Dunn in recent months have told associates they see the space council as a “waste of time”, according to the sources, stirring doubts about its fate and whether Vice President JD Vance would have an interest in chairing it as required by law.
Following Trump’s election victory, his team did not contact the space council, chaired by Kamala Harris, as it did with NASA and other agencies over transition plans, one of the sources said. The council’s staff offices near the White House have mostly been emptied, the source said.
Dunn, SpaceX and the heads of former President Joe Biden‘s space council did not respond to requests for comment.
The space council’s demise would be an early indication of SpaceX’s influence over space policy under Trump.
Musk, SpaceX’s CEO who spent a quarter of a billion dollars to help Trump back in the White House, has maintained close proximity with the president and united with him on plans to send missions to Mars during his second term.
Trump in December named Jared Isaacman, a Musk associate and longtime customer of SpaceX, to lead NASA. In November, Trump joined Musk in SpaceX’s Texas mission control for the company’s sixth Starship test launch, wooed by a Mars-tailored rocket that could play a role in potential Mars missions.
Biden’s administration kept the council, which hosted one public council meeting per year, as required, to focus largely on building international alliances and rules in space.
In 2023, the council released a proposal that frustrated the private space industry for seeking to implement “mission authorization”, which would have resulted in greater U.S. government supervision of corporate activity in space.
Trump’s first administration in 2017 revived the space council, after it was disbanded in 1993, as a spearhead for the creation of the U.S. Space Force and platform to launch policies such as returning humans to the moon and reforming commercial space launch regulations.
If the council is axed, two sources said, Trump’s team would look to build on some of those space policy efforts from his first term while making good on a campaign promise to trim back federal bureaucracy, a key task handed to Musk’s government efficiency team.
Views on the space council’s value fluctuate between presidential administrations, with some seeing it as duplicative of smaller space-focused White House offices while others believe it allows for quicker action on space priorities.
Audrey Schaffer, former space policy chief on Biden’s National Security Council, defended the space council’s role in an op-ed, opens new tab on Monday.
“Without a team dedicated to space policy,” Schaffer said, “the sheer volume of issues White House staff must tackle on a daily basis quickly crowds out any space agenda.”
