SpaceX has made no secret of the fact that it wants to go to Mars and, that too, very soon. The company previously set an ambitious target to launch its first unmanned mission to Mars in 2018 but SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell has now said that the company realizes that it might have been too ambitious with this target.
SpaceX’s Martian lander that it calls Red Dragon may not be ready for the mission next year like the company had hoped it would be. Shotwell revealed this development during a press conference where it was announced that SpaceX would be launching a rocket for the very first tie from the iconic Launch Complex 39A at the NASA Kennedy Space Center.
SpaceX wanted to send the Red Dragon lander to Mars by 2022 but it rescheduled the mission to 2018 and while the team was fully committed to achieving this goal, they realized that the company “needed to put more resources and focus more heavily on our crew program and our Falcon Heavy program.”
So what does that mean for SpaceX’s first unmanned mission to Mars? They are now looking at going through with this mission “in the 2020 timeframe.” These unmanned missions will be crucial in testing all of the technology that will eventually be used to ferry real live human astronauts to the Red Planet.
Filed in . Read more about Spacex.