By 2026, SpaceX plans to send unmanned starships to Mars; crew missions are planned in 2030.

Elon Musk reveals that SpaceX plans to launch unmanned Mars landings in 2026, with the possibility of crewed flights beginning of 2030.

Setting high standards for Mars exploration, SpaceX plans to send unmanned Starships there starting in 2026. The CEO and creator of SpaceX, Elon Musk, highlighted in his X announcement of this schedule that the first trips will test the spacecraft's capacity to land on Mars undamaged. In the event that these solo landings are successful, SpaceX plans to begin crewed missions to Mars by 2030.

The Starship rocket, with a height of around 400 feet and a thrust of 16.7 million pounds, will play an essential part in these missions. The Starship is made up of an upper-stage spacecraft that is 165 feet tall and a first-stage rocket known as Super Heavy. It was designed to be quickly reusable. In comparison, NASA's disposable Space Launch System (SLS), which is used for the Artemis moon program, is not as reusable as this design.

The long-term objective of Musk is to construct a self-sustaining metropolis on Mars in 20 years, with an exponential increase in flight rates. He believes that avoiding the possibility of catastrophic occurrences on Earth is essential to the existence and longevity of human consciousness as a multiplanetary species.

SpaceX's plans for Mars represent a major step toward achieving Elon Musk's goal of cosmic expansion, which is to establish human habitation there.