SpaceX is still seeing boots on Mars by 2030 and the rocket that will make the trip into orbit for the first time next month.
“We need to put people on the surface of Mars … in this decade,” the president and chief operating officer of SpaceX Gene Shotwell told CNBC. “People on the moon, earlier.”
The timeline repeats who the founder of the company is Elon Musk predicts in March when he said he hoped to see a crew on the Red Planet by 2029. At one point, he hoped to put people on our neighboring planet as early as 2024, but as Musk himself often admits, his goals tend to slip.
As for the moon, NASA has signed a contract with SpaceX to use its Starship rocket to take astronauts Artemis to the lunar surface. We will soon see this happen in 2025.
Shotwell added that he believed that a successful unmanned mission to Mars could inspire enthusiasm for sending people on routine flights.
“I think we need to make a big delivery to the surface of Mars, and then people will start thinking harder about it, and then I think in five or six years, people will see that this is going to be a real place to go. “.
Potential launch windows for such a payload to the Red Planet exist in late 2024 and 2026.
Shotwell also said last Thursday that the next Starship test flight should take place in June or July, according to Bloomberg.
Soon The FAA has postponed its target date to complete the necessary environmental review for the launch by the end of May. The planned mission will see Starship and Super Heavy Booster launch from Texas and make a quick trip to orbit before landing in soft water off the coast of Hawaii. Meanwhile, the accelerator is expected to attempt to land on an offshore platform in the Gulf of Mexico.
https://www.cnet.com/science/space/spacex-president-predicts-people-on-mars-this-decade-starship-in-space-soon/#ftag=CADf328eec
