What Trump’s second term means for space and why one expert is ‘hugely optimistic’ [Video]

Now that president-elect Donald Trump is set to return to power in the US, Elon Musk’s plans for sending humans beyond Earth’s orbit may be more likely to come to fruition.

Space industry experts told Business Insider that Musk’s influence over Trump could help advance his business interests, including sending the first crewed mission to Mars.

“I’m hugely optimistic about what’s going to happen in space now,” Michelle Hanlon, executive director of the Center for Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi School of Law, told Business Insider.

Hanlon’s optimism isn’t unfounded, especially if Trump’s second term focuses on space as much as his first.

During his first term, from 2017 to 2021, Trump’s administration founded the Space Force, re-launched the National Space Council, and established NASA’s Artemis program. This program is set to return astronauts to the moon and lay the groundwork for the first crewed mission to Mars.

But space isn’t the …