Elon Musk's SpaceX Makes Mars Top Priority For Starship, With Human Landing By 2025

SpaceX has recently achieved what no other private space firm could in the space race history.

While there is no doubt that the milestone was gigantic and one of critical importance for the generations to come, it was just a stepping stone for the firm¡¯s ultimate goal - to get humans settled on Mars.

NASA

More precisely, the goal is of SpaceX's founder and chief executive Elon Musk.

In fact, this goal framed the very foundation of the company, eventually turning it into a private rocket maker due to the lack of rockets at a competitive price in the market.

After building SpaceX from the ground up, to make rockets capable of re-landing and relaunching for the first time in human history, to send humans to space for the first time in decades from American soil, to conducting scores of flights to the International Space Station, SpaceX now stares its goal right in the face.

SpaceX Starship (Render: SpaceX)

Hence, it did not come as a surprise when Musk directed all his staff at SpaceX to now focus on developing its next-generation spacecraft - ¡®Starship¡¯. Once built, the Starship will be the world¡¯s most powerful launch vehicle ever developed, with a capacity of carrying more than 100 metric tonnes to Earth orbit.

Once it takes off, the spacecraft is designed to carry both crew and cargo to ¡°Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond¡± SpaceX says on its website.

Elon Musk's email to SpaceX

As per an internal email sent by Elon Musk to staff and seen by CNBC, the SpaceX CEO mentioned the development of Starship to be the primary focus for the company, post the successful human launch for ISS. Alongside, SpaceX will work on the safe return of the Crew Dragon from the International Space Station.

Once ready, Starship will practically propel SpaceX to the next era of the global space race. This is because the reusable launch vehicle, in addition to bringing down the launch costs drastically, will also carry enough power to aim for Mars.

(Image: SpaceX)

Once the possibility of reaching the red planet is met, Elon Musk plans to build a human colony on it.

Humans on Mars by 2025

For this, the SpaceX CEO imagines a manned flight to the planet of Mars by as early as 2025.

Once on the planet, the astronauts will set up an operational base on Mars, complete with equipment, supplies, as well as production plants. The possibility of terraforming the planet is still under consideration by various space agencies.

The human base to be setup on Mars will first be practiced on the Moon, with NASA¡¯s Artemis program. The program intends to return a manned flight to the moon to possibly setup a base on it. The base would then prove to be another stepping stone for future flights to Mars.