There is a 50% chance that SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft will embark on its initial uncrewed journey to Mars by the end of 2026, according to space technology company’s leader Elon Musk.
In a video published by SpaceX on May 29, 2025, Musk presented a detailed timeline for the future of the SpaceX Starship, which is designed to transport crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars, and beyond. The event took place at a new Starbase in Cameron County, Texas.
“This is the first new city made in America in quite a few decades, and this is where we are going to develop the technology necessary to take humanity to another planet for the first time in a four and a half billion history of Earth,” Musk said in a speech at the event.
During the event, Musk suggested there was a 50-50 chance that SpaceX would meet the 2026 deadline for the first mission to Mars. He added that, if Starship wasn’t ready by then, SpaceX would wait an additional two years before making another attempt.
He claimed that “all of the ingredients necessary to make life multi-planetary” will be achieved with the third version of Starship, which the company is aiming to launch for the first time at the end of 2025.
However, Elon Musk has previously failed to meet deadlines for Mars missions, first targeting an uncrewed flight in 2018 and a crewed mission by 2024 – neither of which ultimately came to pass.
Starship has faced several challenges, including unsuccessful launches in January 2025, March 2025, and most recently in May 2025, when the vehicle broke apart mid-flight.
Musk expressed his desire to create “civilizational resilience,” whereby Mars can “potentially come to the rescue of Earth if something goes wrong”, and similarly, “Earth can come to the rescue of Mars”.
“In order to achieve this goal, we have to make rapidly reusable rockets so that the cost per flight or the cost per ton to Mars is as low as possible. Rapidly reusable, reliable rockets are the key,” Musk explained.
The SpaceX leader mentioned that the company is now at a point where it can produce a spaceship approximately every two to three weeks.
Ultimately, the company’s goal is to reach the production of 1,000 spaceships annually, equivalent to three spaceships each day. Musk added that eventually, the company will manufacture Starships for Mars on the same scale that Boeing and Airbus now produce commercial aircraft.
“Each launch is about learning more and more about what’s needed to make life multi-planetary and to improve Starship to the point where it can be taking hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, to Mars,” Musk said. “Ideally, we can take anyone and bring all of the equipment necessary to make Mars self-sustaining.”
