SpaceX Mars Mission Could Be Unveiled In 2016; Elon Musk To Make First Trip To ISS By 2020
SpaceX and Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk took the stage at the StartmeupHK Festival in Hong Kong earlier this week.
He addressed some key questions about the ambitious and potentially revolutionary SpaceX Mars mission.
Rumors have been swirling around within the global aerospace community for the past few months that SpaceX will soon unveil an expensive and sophisticated architecture for facilitating manned mission to the red planet within a decade.
When asked about these rumors, a company insider reportedly told Ars Technica that nothing was imminent.
Musk, however, acknowledged that he was optimistic about unveiling the architecture later this year at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC).
"I'm hoping to describe that architecture later this year at IAC ... and I think that will be quite exciting," he told the attendees of StartmeupHK of the company's mission to Mars.
This year, the IAS will be held in Guadalajara, Mexico from Sept. 26 to 29. The event will include discussions of both starships as well as super-heavy rockets, known as the Mars Colonial Transporter, designed to ferry a large number of humans from Earth to the Mars.
Musk also discussed his plans to visit the International Space Station (ISS) aboard his own craft by the end of this decade.
Speaking of the challenges associated with making a round trip to the ISS in one's personal craft, the SpaceX CEO said that he did not think it will be "that hard".
SpaceX is currently conducting a series of tests in collaboration with NASA to enable its Dragon Capsule to carry human Astronauts.
Dragon Capsules have already been commissioned to transport cargos to the ISS.
While earlier reports suggested that the project could be delayed, Musk said that the if everything goes according to plan, a manned Dragon 2 spacecraft will be possible by the end of 2017, thus becoming the first ever private spacecraft in history to carry humans to orbit.
