Elon Musk thinks that the giant Starship rocket may be able to fly to March at the end of 2026, still with his improbable passenger.
We had the year. We now have the month, roughly. On August 6, 2025, Elon Musk gave news of his project consisting in sending a spatial mission to Mars with the giant Starship rocket, which is still being design. According to the American entrepreneur, and founder of SpaceX, this flight could come at the very end of 2026.
More specifically, the interested party thought there is a ” low probability “For the launcher to leave in November or December 2026. He also reiterated his intention to take on a crew on board, which will actually be made up of optimus robots, Android machines that Tesla manufactures, another of his businesses.
This vague calendar as well as these artificial “astronauts” had already been mentioned by Elon Musk this spring. He took advantage of this new speech, which consisted in responding to a surfer on X (ex-Twitter), to restore the rest of the program he hoped to see, in his quest plan of the red planet.
Why try a flight at the end of December 2026?
Why want to try to leave in November/December, rather than another period? Because because of celestial mechanics inside the solar system, and the respective orbits of the earth and Mars, there are periods more conducive than others for such a journey. And precisely, there is an interesting shooting window at the end of 2026.
Between the blue planet and the red planet, favorable alignments take place approximately every two years (26 months more precisely). And within these launch opportunities, you should not drag too much: the window is only open a few weeks. If this niche is missed, then we will have to wait for the next “train”, in more than two years.
Thus, in the event that SpaceX misses the mark at the end of 2026, the next realistic option is December 2028 / January 2029 (this is what the Exomars mission, regularly postponed, with the astromobile Rosalind Franklin) or, if really there is delay in the program, February to April 2031. And so on.
Mission prospects to nuance
This is why, in the rest of his message, Elon Musk evokes in a more realistic way a ” First flight without humans In three and a half years (which covers both the time remaining until the next shooting window at the end of 2026, and the two -year period to reach the next one). And then, a flight “with human” in five and a half years.
These deadlines are obviously very hypothetical, and to consider with caution. Elon Musk himself does not seem certain that SpaceX can launch anything in a year and a half towards the red planet (even if he has already had the opportunity to demonstrate in 2018 with the Falcon Heavy rocket, which embarked a Tesla Roadster and Starman).
The calendar leaves all the more skeptical due, on the one hand, punctual difficulties that SpaceX encounters with the development of the starship (with sometimes inevitable delay) and, on the other hand, a whole string of issues to be resolved to go on Mars. Especially if it is a question of conveying humans.
And above all, Elon Musk has a notable history of promises that have not been materialized on the announced dates.
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