Mark Kelly used to lay low in the U.S. Senate before Kamala Harris named him as a potential running mate earlier this year.

Before then, caution was a Kelly trademark as he kept his profile earthbound. Even some of his own constituents complained they hardly knew the man.

That was then.

On Sunday, we saw the new Mark Kelly. We saw ignition and liftoff, and caution thrown to the wind.

The former Navy pilot and former NASA astronaut went on CNN’s State of the Union and picked a fight with another spaceman, Elon Musk.

Kelly is a surrogate for Harris. Musk is a surrogate for Donald Trump.

CNN’s Dana Bash played a clip of Musk speaking at Trump’s rally on Saturday in Butler, Pa., where the former president had survived a July 13 assassination attempt.

In the clip, Musk, the founder of SpaceX and co-founder of Tesla, told the Trump crowd, “This is no ordinary election. The other side wants to take away your freedom of speech. … They want to take away your right to vote effectively. …President Trump must win to preserve the Constitution. He must win to preserve democracy in America.”

Bash turned to Kelly and said, “Musk, as you know, has a huge social media platform and a lot of influence........

© Arizona Republic