Elon Musk Targets Sending Unmanned Starships To Mars By The End Of 2026

JAKARTA Two days after the latest failure in a series of test flights of its Mars rocket, Starship, Elon Musk said on Thursday 29 May that he expected the futuristic vehicle to make its first trip to the unmanned red planet by the end of next year.

Musk described the Starship development timeline in a video published by his Los Angeles-based rocket company SpaceX. The video comes a day after Musk announced his resignation from the administration of US President Donald Trump, where he was previously involved in campaigns to mitigate government bureaucracy.

Previously, Musk had stated that he would reduce his role in government to focus more on his businesses, including SpaceX and electric car manufacturers and Tesla Inc batteries.

However, Musk admits that the plan relies heavily on Starship's success in overcoming various technical challenges, especially refueling maneuvers in Earth's orbit after the launch of an important stage of the mission to Mars.

The end of 2026 is the right time window because of Earth and Mars' parallel position around the Sun, allowing for the fastest journey between the two planets within 7 to 9 months. If the Starship was not ready by then, Musk said SpaceX would have to wait two more years to try again.

The inaugural flight to Mars will later carry a simulation crew in the form of one or more Tesla-made humanoid robots Optimus. The first human landing is planned for a second or third mission. Musk even envisions launching 1,000 to 2,000 ships every two years to quickly build an independent human colony on Mars.

NASA is currently targeting to return to landing humans on the moon with the fastest Starship in 2027 more than 50 years after the last Apollo-era landing as a first step towards a manned mission to Mars in the 2030s.

Musk had previously stated the target of sending a SpaceX unmanned vehicle to Mars in early 2018 and had ambitions to launch his first manned mission there by 2024.

He is scheduled to give a live presentation entitled The Road to Making Life Multiplanetary from the launch site of the Starbase SpaceX in Texas on Tuesday night, following the test flight of the ninth Starship on the same day.

However, the live broadcast was canceled without notification after Starship lost control and exploded into fireball about 30 minutes after launch, midway through the flight track and failed to reach some of the most important test goals.

Two previous trials in January and March also failed dramatically. The Starship exploded shortly after launch, causing debris over the Caribbean region and forcing many commercial flights to change lanes as a precaution.

Musk responded casually to the latest failure via a brief upload on platform X, saying the incident resulted in a lot of good data to analyze and promising a faster launch schedule for further trials.