SpaceX has put off a mission to Mars planned for this year, shifting its focus to a long-promised lunar voyage for NASA.

The rocket company told investors it will prioritize going to the moon first and attempt a trip to Mars at a later time, according to people familiar with the matter. The company will target March 2027 for a lunar landing without humans on board, another person said. 

The strategic shift comes as SpaceX doubles down on plans to launch artificial-intelligence data centers in space after acquiring Elon Musk’s startup xAI. That deal, announced Monday, gives the combined company a $1.25 trillion valuation. SpaceX also plans to go public in an IPO that could come as soon as summer.    

In a memo announcing the merger, Musk, who also serves as SpaceX’s CEO, outlined the company’s plans to help build a permanent presence on the moon. He referenced aspirations to use it as a base for exploration deeper in space.

“The capabilities we unlock by making space-based data centers a reality will fund and enable self-growing bases on the Moon, an entire civilization on Mars and ultimately expansion to the Universe,” he said.

NASA hired SpaceX a few years ago to prepare a version of its Starship vehicle to meet an agency spacecraft near the moon, take on a crew and transport U.S. astronauts down to the lunar surface. Landing U.S. astronauts there is a key part of the agency’s Artemis space-exploration program.

The Texas-based company has used its billions of dollars in NASA funding to help develop Starship, a more than 400-foot-tall rocket which is designed to be fully reusable.

Last year, Musk called the moon “a distraction” and said SpaceX is going “straight to Mars.” Musk previously lobbied President Trump for backing on his Mars mission by telling the president that getting people to the planet would cement his legacy as a “president of firsts,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

SpaceX previously said it planned to launch five Starships to Mars in late 2026 to take advantage of a time when the distance between Earth and Mars shrinks, creating an easier voyage. 

In a podcast interview aired in January, Musk downplayed the prospects of getting to Mars this year. “We could but it would be a low probability” and “somewhat of a distraction,” he said. 

The company will be hard-pressed to meet the March 2027 schedule. Doing so will require the company to frequently launch Starship and show it can refuel the vehicle while it is in orbit. 

Agency officials put pressure on SpaceX last year, calling on the company to prioritize the moon. In October, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who was then running NASA, said SpaceX was behind and wanted more competition to deliver a vehicle that could get astronauts on the moon.

Since then, SpaceX has pitched NASA on what it has called a simplified path back to taking crews down to the moon.

Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin is pushing to beat SpaceX to the moon with its own simplified moon-landing system. In January, Blue Origin said it would pause its suborbital tourism business to focus on lunar efforts.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said at his confirmation hearing last year he welcomed competition between SpaceX and Blue Origin in creating lunar lander vehicles.

The agency plans to launch astronauts soon on a lunar fly-by called Artemis II. That mission would set the stage for a potential astronaut moon landing in 2028 with SpaceX or Blue Origin.