SpaceX will send the first unmanned Starship spacecraft to Mars in two years when the window for flights from Earth to Mars opens, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in a post on the social platform X on Sunday night.
08.09.2024 18:30
Photo: SITA/AP, Eric Gay
SpaceX’s Starship mega rockets during preparation before a test launch from the base in Boca Chica, Texas on March 13, 2024.
“The ships will not have a human crew to verify their reliability and ability to safely land on Mars,” Musk said. He added that if these landings go well, his company will send the first manned ships to Mars in four years. “The number of flights will gradually increase from then on with the aim of building a self-sufficient city in about 20 years,” he added.
Musk founded SpaceX in 2002. In April, he announced that the first unmanned ship would land on Mars within five years and the first manned ship within seven years.
In June, the Starship rocket successfully completed a hypersonic reentry from space and landed in the Indian Ocean. It successfully completed the test mission with a round trip of the planet on the fourth attempt.
Musk hopes that the Starship program will produce a large, multi-purpose, next-generation spacecraft that will be able to carry people and cargo to the Moon by the end of this decade, and that it can later be used for flights to Mars.
On July 16, 1969, the three-member crew of the Apollo 11 mission took off from the American Cape Canaveral aboard a Saturn V rocket. It took 102 hours, 45 minutes and 42 seconds for the lunar module Eagle to land on the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969.
Source: vat.pravda.sk
