SpaceX announced in a tweet today that the company would send its Dragon capsule to Mars as soon as 2018. Through two representative images accompanying the tweet, SpaceX also hinted that the capsules would be launched by the company’s Falcon Heavy rocket, a heavier version of its currently operation Falcon 9 rocket. The tweet also indicated that multiple missions would be flown.
Planning to send Dragon to Mars as soon as 2018. Red Dragons will inform overall Mars architecture, details to come pic.twitter.com/u4nbVUNCpA
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 27, 2016
SpaceX was most recently in the news after one of its Falcon 9 rockets, in the course of a commercial launch to the International Space Station, delivered its payload and then came back down, landing upright on a barge floating off the coast of Florida. According to the company’s CEO Elon Musk, who’s made no secret of his ambition to colonise the red planet in his lifetime, reusing rockets is key to reducing launch costs and achieving that goal.