Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder, stated that the business may land a spaceship on Mars in three to four years.
The remark came when Mr. Musk spoke via videoconference on Thursday at the International Astronautical Congress in Azerbaijan, along with other updates on the progress of SpaceX’s Starship, a massive rocket.
Quotable Quote: “How to Get to Mars.”
“I think it’s sort of feasible within the next four years to do an uncrewed test landing there,” Mr. Musk said during a one-hour question-and-answer session with Clay Mowry, head of the International Astronautical Federation.
Mr. Musk and SpaceX have a long history of making great advances in spaceflight. This includes the normal landing and reuse of SpaceX’s current Falcon 9 rocket booster stages: the business has launched 70 times this year alone.
Mr. Musk, on the other hand, has a track record of taking significantly longer than expected to achieve his objectives.
Mr. Musk originally revealed his Mars rocket in 2016, followed by an even larger rocket called the Interplanetary Transport System, during the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico. He anticipated that SpaceX’s first unmanned landing on Mars will take place in 2022, followed by the first human mission in 2024.
So far, there has only been one test flight of Starship, which took off from the launchpad before spinning out of control and was ordered to destroy the vehicle some minutes later.
Mr. Musk has stated that a second Starship is nearing completion. However, SpaceX is still waiting for the Federal Aviation Administration to award a new launch license, which may happen as early as this month.
Mr. Musk highlighted some of the modifications in the Starship’s developing design on Thursday. The engines of the second stage will fire before it separates from the booster during the second flight. The technique, known as “hot staging,” can be difficult.
“You’re essentially blasting the top of the booster” with the second-stage engines, Mr. Musk explained. “This is actually, from a physics standpoint, the most efficient way.”
Mr. Musk no longer predicts that people will land on Mars in 2024, but he does have other technologically ambitious plans for Starship next year. SpaceX intends for the rocket’s Super Heavy booster to not only return to its launch location, but also hover around the ground as two arms on the launch tower grasp it in midair. When the Starship upper stage returns from orbit, the identical technique would be employed.
Mr. Musk stated that there was a “reasonable chance” of capturing a rocket within the next year and potentially a Starship from orbit before the end of the year.
Mr. Musk also stated that SpaceX’s next-generation Starlink satellites might launch next year on disposable, non-reusable versions of the Starship stage.
