Starship departs for Mars at the end of next year, carrying Optimus.
If those landings go well, then human landings may start as soon as 2029, although 2031 is more likely. https://t.co/JRBB95sgNN
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 15, 2025
SpaceX founder Elon Musk has said his Starship rocket will head to Mars by the end of next year, as the company investigates several recent explosions in flight tests.
Human landings could begin as early as 2029 if initial missions go well, though “2031 was more likely”, he added in a post on his social media platform X.
Starship – the largest rocket ever created standing at 123m – is crucial to Musk’s ambitions to colonise the planet Mars.
However it has suffered multiple failures in tests – one of the rockets exploded minutes after it was launched from Texas as part of a test last week, the second failure this year after a similar “rapid unscheduled disassembly” in January.
SpaceX said it would review data “to better understand [the] root cause” of the most recent explosion and noted it happened after the loss of “several” engines.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said the company would be required to conduct an investigation before it could fly again.
Nasa hopes to use a modified version of the spaceship as a human lunar lander for its Artemis missions to return to the Moon.
The tech billionaire has grand designs that the rocket system will one day take humans to the Moon, and then on to Mars, making humans “multi-planetary”.
Musk has long targeted a trip to Mars. In 2016, he said he was planning to send his Dragon spacecraft as early as 2018.
The billionaire said in 2020 that he remained confidant that his company would land humans on Mars six years later.
In 2024, he said he would launch the first Starships to Mars in 2026, with plans to send crewed flights in four years.
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