This might come sooner than you think since NASA has announced a crewed Mars mission for 2018.
In a recent interview with CNBC’s Shepard Smith, SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell said that astronauts would likely reach the surface of the Red Planet before the end of the next decade.
“In this decade, I believe it will happen. A lot sooner than you think. People on the moon “The short conversation with Shotwell revealed the following:
“I believe we need to bring a significant amount of supplies on the surface of Mars before people begin to think more seriously about it,” she said. In five or six years, I believe that people will realize that this is a legitimate destination to be.
Without a doubt, SpaceX aspires to be the company responsible for bringing this lofty goal to fruition. In order to transport people and goods to the moon, Mars, and beyond, the business is creating a massive, reusable rocket-spaceship combination dubbed Starship.
On the horizon for the Starship is a series of lunar missions. The vehicle was chartered for a round-the-moon voyage by Japanese businessman Yusaku Maezawa in 2018, with a target launch date of 2024 set for its debut. Also in the works is NASA’s Artemis mission, which will send people to the moon’s south pole in 2025, and will use Starship as its first crewed lunar lander.
Currently, NASA considers Artemis to be a moon-to-Mars trip, with a crewed voyage to the Red Planet scheduled to launch in 2040 or thereabouts – around a decade after Shotwell witnessed the first pair of boots crunching into the red mud on the Red Planet.
It is expected that SpaceX will launch the vehicle’s first-ever orbital test flight from its Starbase facility in South Texas in the not-too-distant future, marking a significant step forward in the construction of its Starship spacecraft. While the FAA is working on an environmental evaluation of the operations at Starbase, that launch will not be possible until the FAA is through with its work.
According to the FAA, the evaluation was initially scheduled to conclude by the end of 2021, but it has been postponed many times, most recently to May 31, 2019.
NBCUniversal News Groups’ television and streaming networks broadcasted Shotwell’s interview with Smith as part of a program called “Inspiring America: The 2022 Inspiration List,” which will air this weekend across the company’s networks.
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Published By: Aman Gupta
Edited By: Vanshika Sahu
