SpaceX President predicts people on Mars ‘in this decade’

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has its sights set on Mars, with a timeline of ‘five or six years’ to do it.

The company’s president, Gwynne Shotwell, has said that the Starship rocket, destined for Mars, could likely launch on a test flight from Texas in June or July.

Last week, SpaceX said that its Starship prototype had successfully completed its fifth high-altitude flight test from Starbase in Texas.

SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket (collectively referred to as Starship) is touted to be a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo ‘to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond’.

‘We should put people on the surface of Mars…in this decade,’ Shotwell told CNBC. ‘People on the moon, sooner.’

The timeline echoes what the company’s founder, Elon Musk, predicted in a tweet from March saying humans will be on Mars by 2029.

‘Within five or six years, people will see that [Mars] will be a real place to go’, said Shotwell.

SpaceX is scheduled to land NASA’s Artemis 3 mission - the first crewed moon touchdown since Apollo 17 in 1972 - on the lunar surface in 2025 or 2026 on the company’s reusable Starship vehicle.

Starship will be the world’s most powerful launch vehicle ever developed, with the ability to carry over 100 metric tonnes to Earth orbit.

Shotwell added that successful uncrewed mission to Mars could grow people’s enthusiasm for routine flights to the Red Planet. ‘I think we need to get a large delivery to the surface of Mars and then people will start thinking harder about it, and then I think within five or six years people will see that that will be a real place to go,’ she said.