Mars is the closest neighboring planet to Earth, with an average distance of 140 million miles (225 million kilometers), which is half the distance between the Sun and Earth. Scientists have been interested in bringing human colonies to the Red Planet because they believe people can live there.

In 2016, Phys.org reported that Elon Musk predicts sending the first humans on Mars by 2024 and landing on the Red Planet by 2025. But as the year draws closer, it seems that the goal is getting farther. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has a new estimate of when humans will set foot on the Martian surface, which is different from its earlier plan.

When Will Humans Set Foot on Mars? Elon Musk Pushed Back the Target For Reaching the Red Planet
(Photo : Unsplash/Nicolas Lobos)
When Will Humans Set Foot on Mars? Elon Musk Pushed Back the Target For Reaching the Red Planet

Musk Thinks Humans Will Reach Mars in 2029

Getting to Mars takes a lot of planning and it seems that Musk's initial ambitions may have been too optimistic, CNet reported. Although space tourism started last year, bringing crewed missions to the Red Planet may take a little more time as humanity's chances of setting foot on Mars before the end of the decade are slowly fading.

Since 2016, Musk and his SpaceX company have been making a lot of progress in building a rocket that will take humans to the Martian surface. However, it is not quite fast enough to meet the initial timeline.

Then in December 2020, Musk said that he is highly confident that humans can reach Mars by 2026. Starship, the spacecraft being developed and designed by SpaceX to bring astronauts to the Moon for NASA and Mars, has yet to make it to space despite some successful high-altitude flights.

Now in reply to a Twitter post on Monday, wherein the photo showed the Apollo 11 Moon landing in 1969 along with another image of Mars landing but read "20_ _?" Musk replied that it will be in 2029. The SpaceX CEO predicted that it will happen before the end of the decade.

So far, the dates he has been giving are those times when the two worlds are at their nearest distance, creating launch windows. The ideal launch window for this decade is in late 2024, late 2026, and late 2028 or early 2029.

Musk hopes to build 1,000 Starships within 10 years that will send 1 million people to Mars by 2050. But as the predicted year of when humans will finally set foot on the Red Planet is continually pushed back, many wonder whether it could be possible to set up human colonies on Mars by the end of the decade.

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Colonization of Mars: Why Go to the Red Planet?

According to the European Space Agency (ESA), Mars is an obvious target for future space exploration because it is Earth's closest neighbor in the Solar System. More so, scientists are interested in understanding the planet's evolution and whether it once hosted life, given the evidence they found in previous years that the planet was once full of water and had a thicker atmosphere than today.

SpaceX also explains that the planet still receives decent sunlight, albeit colder than Earth, but there could be ways to warm it up. More so, its atmosphere is primarily carbon dioxide with some nitrogen and argon, which means plants could grow there.

Although its gravity is only 38% of Earth's, it would still allow for lifting heavy objects and movement. Lastly, the day on Mars is remarkably similar to that of Earth.

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Check out more news and information on Mars in Science Times.