The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Trump administration initiative to drastically cut federal spending, has yet to announce any cuts affecting companies owned by its head, Elon Musk. It’s not for a lack of opportunity. An internet search of websites, press releases, news reports, and databases (such as this and this) reveals that from 2003 to 2032, Musk’s companies will have been paid up to $46 billion or more in government contracts, loans, subsidies, and tax credits. Most of the money is for current or planned projects.

None of these information sources alone fully account for the total revenues flowing from the US government to Musk and his companies, or for work performed for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). My calculations show that his companies — SpaceX, Starlink, and Tesla — will collect at least five dollars for every dollar DOGE proposes to cut, which, based on an independent analysis by PolitiFact, has amounted to about $8.6 billion so far.

SpaceX, the rocket company Musk has a 54 percent stake in, will receive the largest chunks of government money for its work on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) lunar landing program, Artemis. SpaceX is also contracted to launch satellites and space telescopes for NASA, NOAA, the European Space Agency, and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites.

The sums flowing to SpaceX could swell further if the Federal Aviation Administration follows through with its apparent intent to cancel a $2.4 billion contract with Verizon to upgrade the national air traffic control system and transfer the project to Starlink, a wholly owned subsidiary of SpaceX.

“It is unclear at this moment if the Verizon contract is officially dead, or if a Starlink deal has been formally inked,” the Rolling Stone reports. US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says he has grown impatient with Verizon because it is “not moving fast enough” to complete the upgrade. Although Starlink has not officially taken over the contract, Rolling Stone reported that FAA officials have ordered their staff “to begin finding tens of millions of dollars for a Starlink deal.” SpaceX has so far denied it intends to take over the contract.

Many people have criticized Musk’s dual role as head of DOGE and SpaceX as creating a serious conflict of interest, given his unique ability to shield his business from federal spending cuts while recommending the same for others. Asked whether the White House saw this as a conflict of interest, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said­­ it was a question only the tech billionaire could answer.

Three Democratic senators — Chris Van Hollen, Richard Blumenthal, and Elizabeth Warren —have called for an investigation into whether Musk’s activities violate criminal conflict-of-interest laws. In a letter to the Justice Department, the senators said Musk may be using his government role “to benefit his own private company.” The investigation would include the FAA contract and “any particular matter in which he has a financial interest,” according to The Guardian.

“Elon Musk is a walking conflict of interest,” Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist at the consumer watchdog Public Citizen, told Mother Jones. “Over and over again, he’s just involved in governmental actions that directly and substantially impact his own financial wellbeing.” Musk has, of course, denied he has any conflicts of interest.

Musk has also been criticized for acting heartlessly and selfishly by eliminating life-saving programs to control and treat diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, ebola, and HIV while his companies collect billions of taxpayer dollars for sending people, satellites, cargo, and telescopes into space.

Although Musk insists that “no one has died” due to the DOGE cuts, that’s not true. “In South Sudan, one of the world’s poorest countries, the efforts by Musk and President Trump are already leading children to die,” Nicholas Kristoff reported in a March 15 report in the New York Times. The report noted that experts at the Center for Global Development have calculated that “an estimated 1,650,000 people could die within a year without American foreign aid for HIV prevention and treatment.”

Meanwhile, SpaceX is working with NOAA to equip a group of five satellites known as Joint Polar Satellite System-4 to keep an eye on oceans, wildfires, polar ice, and atmospheric conditions, including levels of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane. Three of the satellites are already in orbit, and the remaining two are scheduled for launch in 2027 and 2032. The data collected by JPSS-4 is posted here.

At the same time, in his role as DOGE chief, Musk has proposed eliminating more than 1,000 jobs at NOAA. Data from these satellites may fill some of the information gaps resulting from the DOGE staffing cuts, including at the National Weather Service, which could lose weather forecasting and hurricane tracking capabilities, in climate monitoring programs, such as the one that’s been tracking global CO2 levels since 1958 at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, and ocean research programs.

Here is a breakdown of SpaceX’s contracts with American, European, other international government entities:

— A contract to design, build, and launch the Starship Human Landing System. It will carry astronauts from lunar orbit to the Moon’s surface and back for the Artemis III and Artemis IV missions. SpaceX is contracted to receive up to $4.4 billion for this work.

— A contract to design, build, and launch “the Lunar Gateway,” an ambitious international project led by NASA. The gateway will orbit around the moon, serving as a communication hub, science laboratory, and living quarters for astronauts, and as a staging point for deep space exploration. ($7 billion)

— A contract design, build, and launch six satellites and space telescopes to study the sky, including:

• The Pandora space telescope, to focus on at least 20 known exoplanets and their host stars ($300 million);
• The Nancy Roman Grade space telescope, to generate extremely high-resolution images of the universe with a field of view 100 times greater than Hubble, the space telescope launched in 1990 ($255 million)
• The SPEREx space telescope, to provide a highly detailed map of the entire sky, including dark matter and energy, and search for the presence of water and organic molecules ($98.8 million);
• The infrared Near Earth telescope, to detect and observe asteroids and comets that could pose a threat to the Earth ($100 million).
• The Euclid satellite, to map the geometry of the dark universe ($178 million);
• The Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) satellite, to measure polarized X-rays from cosmic sources like black holes and neutron stars. This mission will help scientists understand the extreme environments around these objects ($50.3 million).

— US Department of Defense contracts to design, build, and launch seven satellites for the United States Space Force, forming the backbone of a missile defense system to protect the US. It will also launch two satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office, an independent agency within the Defense Department (SpaceX has been paid for $733 million for the nine launches. In all, 79 launches are planned. If SpaceX wins a contract for every launch (as seems likely; it has won every one so far), the contract would total $5.6 billion.

— Contracts with The International Space Station to:

• Transport crews of astronauts to and from the space station using its Crew Dragon spacecraft. The recent rescue of a crew stranded at the space station was the 10th of 14 launches ($4.93 billion);
• Deliver cargo and supplies to the International Space Station. The first contract, first signed in 2008, has been extended multiple times ($7.5 billion).
• Retrieve the space station once it is retired from use around 2030 ($843 million);

— Contracts to collaborate on three projects to study Earth’s climate in partnership with NASA, NOAA, the European Space Agency, and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, including:

• The twin Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellites measure global sea level rise and provide precise ocean height data essential for understanding climate change and its impact on coastal areas. The first was launched in 2020, and the other will leave for orbit sometime in 2025 ($94 million);
• The Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite will make space-based observations about global ocean colors and clouds. It will also provide data on phytoplankton and aerosols, which will help our understanding of the carbon cycle and how carbon moves between the ocean and atmosphere. These space-based observations will help scientists understand the diversity of marine organisms and their impact on the Earth’s climate ($80.4 million);
• NOAA’s Joint Polar Satellite System-4, a network of five satellites to collect global data on Earth’s environment that will support weather forecasting, climate monitoring, and oceanographic studies. Three of the satellites have already been launched. The other two launches are scheduled for 2027 and 2032. ($112.7 million).

SpaceX has also signed contracts of undetermined value with the European Space Agency and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites. One contract will launch a satellite to enhance weather forecasting and climate monitoring in Europe and Africa and make it possible, for the first time, to observe the full lifecycle of a convective storm from space. The other will launch four satellites to enhance GPS navigation.

The US government has several other contracts with Starlink and Telsa, Musk’s electric car company. SpaceX has been awarded multiple contracts from the DoD, including the US Space Force, for its high-speed Internet services ($3.5 billion), and the General Services Administration has adopted Starlink for several federal agencies, especially those operating remote locations such as NOAA ($4.1 million in 2022 and $1.9 million in 2023). Tesla, meanwhile has been awarded $11.4 billion in regulatory credits from federal and state programs aimed at boosting the electric-car industry.

Scott Amey, an attorney for the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog that investigates and exposes government waste, corruption, abuse of power, said Musk’s prominent role within the Trump administration potentially gives his companies an unfair advantage, for example by discouraging competitors from bidding on contracts they expect him to win regardless of merit. “It could have a chilling effect on the competition,” he said. “There’s a lot of concern about Musk’s conflicts of interest.”

It’s hard to clear predict where more DOGE cuts will come, and what other contracts may come Musk’s way. Musk initially aimed to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget but has since lowered his expectations by half. He has been less vocal about how much he has gained – a total of $46 billion and counting.