Musk stated in a 2011 interview that he hoped to send humans to Mars's surface within 10вЂ“20 years, and in late 2012 he stated that he envisioned a Mars colony of tens of thousands with the first colonists arriving no earlier than the middle of the 2020s. Д¬ompany plans in mid-2016 continued to call for the arrival of the first humans on Mars no earlier than 2024 Д«its of additional information about the mission architecture were released in 2011вЂ“2015, including a 2014 statement that initial colonists would arrive at Mars no earlier than the middle of the 2020s. ДЄs early as 2007, Elon Musk stated a personal goal of eventually enabling human exploration and settlement of Mars, although his personal public interest in Mars goes back at least to 2001. In October 2001, Musk travelled to Moscow with Jim Cantrell (an aerospace supplies fixer), and Adeo Ressi (his best friend from college), to buy refurbished ICBMs ( Dnepr) that could send the envisioned payloads into space. But Musk realized that even with a much larger space budget, travel to Mars would be prohibitively expensive without a fundamental breakthrough in rocket technology. In 2001, Musk conceptualized 'Mars Oasis', a project to land a miniature experimental greenhouse containing seeds with dehydrated gel on Mars to grow plants on Martian soil, 'so this would be the furthest that life's ever traveled' in an attempt to regain public interest in space exploration and increase the budget of NASA. However, Musk has advocated since 2016 a larger set of long-term Mars settlement objectives, going far beyond what SpaceX projects to build any successful colonization would ultimately involve many more economic actors-whether individuals, companies, or governments-to facilitate the growth of the human presence on Mars over many decades, or even centuries. SpaceX intends to concentrate its resources on the transportation part of the Mars colonization project, including the design of a propellant plant based on the Sabatier process that will be deployed on Mars to synthesize methane and liquid oxygen as rocket propellants from the local supply of atmospheric carbon dioxide and ground-accessible water ice.

The expected payload for the Starship launch vehicle is to inject between 100вЂ“150 tonnes (220,000вЂ“330,000В lb) to Mars. After landing on Mars, the spacecraft would be loaded with locally-produced propellants to return to Earth. To achieve a large payload, the spacecraft would first enter Earth orbit, where it is expected to be refueled before it departs to Mars. ДЄ key element of the program is planned to be the SpaceX Starship, a fully reusable super-heavy lift launch vehicle under development since 2018. In March 2022, Musk tweeted an updated prediction of when the first humans would reach Mars: 2029. SpaceX's aspirational goal has been to land the first humans on Mars by 2024, but in October 2020 Elon Musk named 2024 as a goal for an uncrewed mission. The program includes fully reusable launch vehicles, human-rated spacecraft, on-orbit propellant tankers, rapid-turnaround launch/landing mounts, and local production of rocket fuel on Mars via in situ resource utilization (ISRU).

SpaceX's Mars program is a development program initiated by Elon Musk and SpaceX in order to facilitate the eventual colonization of Mars. Artist's conception of a Starship spacecraft heading towards Mars

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