Elon Musk’s SpaceX to Send Ship to Mars by 2018

Via Twitter on April 27,  SpaceX has announced its plans to send its Dragon spacecraft to Mars as soon as 2018. 

Planning to send Dragon to Mars as soon as 2018. Red Dragons will inform overall Mars architecture, details to come pic.twitter.com/u4nbVUNCpA

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 27, 2016

The spacecraft mentioned in the tweet, the Dragon, is a “free-flying” craft designed to deliver both cargo and people to orbiting destinations. Dragon was the first commercial spacecraft to deliver cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2012. 

It continues to fly cargo to and from the ISS. 

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On his own Twitter page, Elon Musk—SpaceX’s billionaire founder—made the impressive claim that the Dragon 2 is designed “to land anywhere in the solar system” and that its Mars mission will be its first test flight. 

While a version capable of carrying crew is in the works, there is no mention on the Dragon’s page of the Red Dragon mission or the Dragon 2. 

But wouldn’t recommend transporting astronauts beyond Earth-moon region. Wouldn’t be fun for longer journeys. Internal volume ~size of SUV.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 27, 2016

Earlier this month, a rocket booster was successfully landed at sea, making SpaceX the first company to be able to reuse its boosters.