In recent months you have surely seen more than one piece of news about SpaceX, Elon Musk’s aerospace company has made history by reaching an agreement with NASA to be in charge of taking manned and unmanned missions into space. However, Musk’s great ambition with SpaceX is to begin the conquest of Mars, and he is close to achieving it.
In an interview with Axel Springer Musk revealed that “hopefully” it will be in 2024 when the first mission with humans goes to Mars, but if due to certain circumstances this is not possible then it will be a fact that in 2026 the first humans will leave for Mars.
On the other hand, the businessman also revealed that in the next 2 years they will seek to send the first unmanned vehicle through one of the SpaceX spacecraft.
Starship SN8 tests progress successfully
A few days ago the Starship SN8 (which is the ship that will take the crew to Mars) completed its next phase of tests successfully, however, so far there are some delays in the tests according to the plan, and this is the possible reason why that Musk has given a window of 2 years to complete all the tests and improve the prototypes before he can travel to the red planet.
Regarding the trip, Musk says it will cost about half a million dollars, however, this idea of SpaceX to reuse many components of the ships will make trip after trip all more economical.
Earth and Mars align favorably every 26 months, so that will be the ideal time to launch the spacecraft towards Mars, hence the tentative travel dates between the manned vehicle and the astronauts are approximately 2 years.