Musk, who dreams of settling on the red planet, took to Twitter on Thursday to say that launching an uncrewed flight mission in 2024 was “not out of the question.”
At the time, Musk had been responding to a variety of questions via a Twitter thread about the expected launch date of his mission to Mars.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 6, 2021
Musk launched his SpaceX Company in hopes of making life multiplanetary. At the International Mars Society Convention in 2020, Musk said that his goals were to expand humanities consciousness while exploring the depths of space, with the more prominent goal being to build a self-sustaining city on Mars.
Musk has a history of being a social media influencer with regards to space, crypto-currency and other futuristic investments. Despite the backlash related to a few of his Twitter posts, some netizens are rooting for Musk and his space ambitions.
Musk mentioned in 2020 that he was “80% to 90%” confident that the company’s Starship rocket would reach orbit this year. However, that estimation is likely to change as the prototype projection only recently managed launch and land successfully.
— ParallelThinker (@ThinkerParallel) May 6, 2021
SpaceX on Wednesday declared the launch of its SN15 prototype was a success as it proved to be the first test flight that did not end in an explosion of the vessel.
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) May 5, 2021
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced in 2019 that 2024 would be the year in which astronauts would return to the Earth’s rocky lunar satellite.
Earth and Mars reach their conjunction every 26 months, which is the most popular time for government space agencies to launch their multiplanetary missions.