If all goes according to plan, SpaceX’s giant rocket, Starship, will launch its Mars exploration mission just two years from now.
“These will test whether we can land these drones on Mars intact. If the landing goes well, the first manned flights to Mars would be four years from now,” SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said on Saturday night (September 7), via X. post It announced a bold new target timeline (Earth and Mars would be properly aligned for an interplanetary mission once every 26 months).
“Flight rates will increase exponentially from there, with the goal of building a self-sustaining city in around 20 years,” Musk added in the same post. “Having multiple planets will greatly extend the lifespan of consciousness, as literally and metabolically all of the eggs will not be on one planet.”
The stainless steel Starship consists of two elements: a first-stage booster called Super Heavy and a 165-foot-tall (50-meter-tall) upper stage spacecraft called Starship.
The stacked Starship will be the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, standing nearly 400 feet (122 meters) tall and generating 16.7 million pounds of thrust at lift-off, nearly double the force of NASA’s Artemis lunar mission rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS).
While the SLS is disposable, Starship is designed to be fully and rapidly reused — in fact, SpaceX plans to land Super Heavy back on the launch pad after each launch, allowing for rapid inspection, refurbishment, and relaunch.
SpaceX believes Starship’s combination of power and efficiency will finally put Musk’s long-held dream of colonizing Mars within reach of humanity.
Related: SpaceX Test Fires Super Heavy Starship Booster Ahead of Fifth Flight (Video)
Starship is not yet fully operational. It has already completed four test flights, in April and November 2023, and in March and June of this year. The giant spacecraft has gotten better with each flight, and in its most recent mission it achieved all of its primary objectives.
SpaceX is currently preparing for the fifth flight of Starship, which could happen any minute now, and the company has already test-fired the Super Heavy and Starship that will fly on this mission.
The fifth flight will feature some new and dramatic action, including the first attempt to land Super Heavy on the launch pad again, using the launch tower’s “chopstick” arm for the maneuver. As Musk likes to say about Starship flights, excitement is guaranteed.
