ANN/AFP/THE STAR – Elon Musk has announced plans to send a Starship rocket to Mars in 2026, carrying Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot on board. The goal is for the robot to arrive on the Red Planet several years ahead of humans.
The SpaceX boss is not one to renege on a promise. According to the billionaire, if all goes well, “human landings may start as soon as 2029, although 2031 is more likely,” according to his message posted on X. Before that, in around 2026, he plans to send a Starship rocket to Mars carrying Optimus, Tesla’s humanoid robot.
This mission will act as a full-scale trial for future human expeditions. It will enable the testing of the technologies needed for the journey to Mars and for on-site exploration. If these initial landings are successful, the first crewed missions launched by SpaceX could follow within a few years.
The success of this project depends on many factors, such as the reliability of the Starship for such a long journey, along with the ability of the Optimus robot to operate effectively in an unfamiliar environment.
This is not Elon Musk’s first venture into space. In 2018, SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon Heavy rocket, which transported a Tesla Roadster with a mannequin at the wheel as its payload. Since then, the vehicle has been following an elliptical orbit around the Sun. Recently, astronomers even identified the object as a potentially dangerous asteroid, before realising that it was a car.
For its part, NASA has other priorities, including its future Artemis Moon exploration program. The US space agency does not plan to send astronauts to Mars until the end of the 2030s, or even later, with very long missions – the journey alone taking nearly 300 days.
