Elon Musk’s SpaceX will be landing its Starship rockets on Mars well before 2030, the billionaire entrepreneur said in a tweet on Tuesday.
The private space company had raised about $850 million in equity financing in February even as a prototype of its Starship rocket exploded during a landing attempt after a high-altitude test launch.
The SN9 prototype was a test model of the heavy-lift rocket being developed by SpaceX to carry humans and 100 tons of cargo on future missions to the moon and Mars.
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Musk, who leads several futuristic companies, including Tesla Inc, Neuralink and Boring Co, said on Tuesday the “really hard threshold is making Mars Base Alpha self-sustaining.”
A first orbital flight is planned for year’s end. Musk has said that he intends to fly Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa around the moon with the Starship in 2023.
REUTERS
