Elon Musk has announced a timeline for the first mission to Mars as SpaceX investigates its recent flight test explosions.

The SpaceX founder has revealed when a rocket is expected to set off for Mars and has even shared his thoughts on when human flights might begin.

Musk believes that humans could be taking off for the Red Planet as early as 2029 if all goes well with the first missions.

SpaceX is set to begin its Mars missions (rbkomar/Getty Images)

Although, the billionaire admitted on his own social media platform X, formerly Twitter, that 2031 is more likely.

Musk has also shared what date the Mars missions will start, revealing that it is due to begin by the end of 2026.

SpaceX has designed the largest rocket ever, standing at 403.5 feet, called Starship.

This rocket will be central to mogul’s bid to colonize Mars, although it has suffered some teething problems during flight tests.

Recently, it experienced explosions just minutes after being launched and in response, SpaceX has said that it would review the data ‘to better understand [the] root cause’ of the problems.

Musk has had his sights set on Mars for the last decade, claiming in 2016 that he would send SpaceX’s Dragon spaceship to the planet in 2018.

While that didn’t end up happening, the billionaire said back in 2020 that he hoped his firm would be able to get humans on Mars in the next six years.

Elon Musk has his sights set on colonizing Mars (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Although it looks like the timeline is later than hoped, it seems that the Tesla boss hasn’t given up.

He has since claimed that the initial mission to Mars will take the Tesla humanoid robot known as Optimus into space and will land the bot on the Red Planet.

The Tesla robot was first unveiled in public at an event in 2024 and it is not yet known what purpose it will serve in the space mission.

Last week, SpaceX launched its Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station with the purpose of bringing back two NASA astronauts that have been stranded in space since June 2024.

Sunita ‘Suni’ Williams and Barry ‘Butch’ Wilmore embarked on an eight-day mission that has stretched over nine months after their spacecraft experienced malfunctions.

But they are expected to finally return back home to Earth in the SpaceX rocket tomorrow (March 18).

NASA has its own lands for space exploration, with its project to put humans back on the moon.

Elon Musk has made new claims about how long it will take to colonize Mars.

The tech mogul has had his sights set on the Red Planet for a long time and has recently said that he believes SpaceX could achieve ‘self sustaining life’ on Mars in a relatively short amount of time.

Musk made this revelation during an interview with Fox News presenter Sean Hannity yesterday (March 18).

Elon Musk has hopes of colonizing Mars (Bronte Wittpenn/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

During the chat, the SpaceX founder shared the firm’s latest breakthroughs with its Starship rocket.

Musk said: “Starship is the first rocket that has the potential to make life multi-planetary, make us a multi-planet civilization for the first time in the history of Earth and that’s truly profound.”

The billionaire also said: “We are going to be able to take astronauts to Mars, in fact we want to take anyone who goes to Mars and ultimately build a self-sustaining civilization on Mars.

“That is the long-term goal of the company, to make life multi-planetary.”

Hannity replied: “That is a very bold vision, how long do you think that might take SpaceX to be able to accomplish?”

To which Musk revealed: “I think we could do it in 20 to 30 years.”

SpaceX anticipates that Starship will have the ability to travel 140 million miles to the Red Planet in a journey time of six months.

The Red Planet is around 140 million miles away from Earth (NEMES LASZLO/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty Images)

It is also hoped that it will be capable of refueling there before making the return trip.

This will be done by ‘leveraging Mars’ natural H2O and CO2 resources to refuel on the surface of Mars’.

According to the SpaceX site: “Mars is about half again as far from the Sun as Earth is, so it still has decent sunlight. It is a little cold, but we can warm it up.

“Its atmosphere is primarily CO2 with some nitrogen and argon and a few other trace elements, which means that we can grow plants on Mars just by compressing the atmosphere.

“Gravity on Mars is about 38% of that of Earth, so you would be able to lift heavy things and bound around. Furthermore, the day is remarkably close to that of Earth.”

Previously, Musk has shared that humans could be taking off for Mars as early as 2029 if all goes well with the first missions, which are due to begin by the end of 2026.

Although, the billionaire admitted on his own social media platform X, formerly Twitter, that 2031 is more likely.

286 days after they first set out on their mission to the International Space Station, Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore are finally back on dry land.

First making a watery splashdown off the coast of Tallahassee and quickly being rushed away on stretchers, the pair were joined by SpaceX‘s Crew-9 astronauts, Nick Hague and Aleksandr Gorbunov.

Although Hague and Gorbunov have been with Williams and Wilmore since September 2024, all four had to wait for the Crew-10 relief team to arrive so they could fly back on the Dragon capsule.

Musk says a lot of things could’ve gone wrong (NASA)

With conspiracy theories that the Biden administration ‘abandoned’ the NASA astronauts up there, President Donald Trump piled on the pressure and told Elon Musk to ‘go get’ them. The White House has since thanked the POTUS for his involvement, while there have been vocal cheers on social media for Musk.

When not busy slashing budgets as the head of the DOGE, he’s also known as the CEO of SpaceX.

Elon Musk soon took to the microphone to discuss the rescue mission, telling Fox News how it could’ve played out very differently.

Following two missions being called off, Crew-10 finally docked with the ISS on March 16. There was a brief handover before Williams, Wilmore, Hague, and Gorbunov undertook the 17-hour journey back to Earth.

According to Musk, there was a real danger that the whole craft could ‘disintegrate’. Walking us through the various issues through the different stages, Musk said: “On the ascent phase, there’s a chance that the first or second stage will blow up.”

Saying that it’s ‘remarkable’ when you see a rocket, Musk admits he tends to think of all the things that could go wrong. He continued: “You could have a first stage failure, a second stage failure, a stage separation failure, the Dragon could fail to separate from the rocket, the trunk could fail to separate from Dragon, there could be an engine failure on the spacecraft itself.”

The tech billionaire concluded: “When it’s coming back, it’s coming in so fast, it’s a blazing meteor, and if anything happens to the heat shield, the whole craft is going to disintegrate.”

Saying that it’s amazing that humans can go into orbit and back, Musk went on to hype the innovation of the Starship rocket that will hopefully make multi-planetary living a real possibility.

With his focus previously on getting Williams and Wilmore back home safely, he can now turn his attention to going further afield.

As the recent spate of exploding SpaceX rockets has shown, Musk’s musings on the ‘remarkable’ nature of getting crews up to the ISS and back really start to hit home.

While Williams and Wilmore are now thrust into a ‘brutal’ recovery regime, we’re sure it’s worth it not to be floating 250 miles above Earth for the foreseeable future.

Elon Musk has claimed that he could have returned the NASA astronauts months ago but the idea was ‘rejected’ by the Biden Administration.

The bold claim was made shortly after NASA astronauts Sunita ‘Suni’ Williams and Barry ‘Butch’ Wilmore made their descent back down to Earth in the SpaceX Dragon capsule yesterday (March 18).

The space firm’s founder spoke to Fox News presenter Sean Hannity, arguing that former President Joe Biden had refused a proposal to bring the stranded astronauts back sooner.

Elon Musk has claimed the astronauts could have be brought home sooner (Keegan Barber/NASA via Getty Images)

Williams and Wilmore embarked on what was meant to be an eight-day mission back in June 2024 but after multiple failures impacted their spacecraft, they became stuck on the International Space Station.

Since then, the pair have been waiting to be picked up by another crew, with NASA working with SpaceX to bring them home.

Musk has previously claimed that he had offered the previous administration an earlier return date.

Speaking about that, Hannity said: “I heard somebody earlier today say in fact it didn’t happen when I believe it did.”

In response, Musk replied: “No, we definitely offered to return the astronauts earlier, there’s no question about that.

“The astronauts were only supposed to be there for eight days and they’ve been there for almost 10 months, so obviously that doesn’t make any sense.

“SpaceX could have brought the astronauts back after a few months at most and we made that offer to the Biden Administration, it was rejected for political reasons and that’s just a fact.”

Elon Musk made the bold claim shortly after the astronauts splashed down (LUDOVIC MARIN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Earlier in the conversation, Musk publicly thanked President Trump, adding: “A huge note of appreciation to President Trump for prioritizing and expediting their return.”

However, NASA officials have contradicted Musk’s claims.

In a press conference held on March 4, officials for the space agency cited both safety and budget concerns over conducting a separate mission to pick up the astronauts.

They also said that it was a desire to maintain a crew on the ISS that was one of the main reasons behind the decision to have Williams and Wilmore remain in space until they could be taken home with the SpaceX crew.

Musk went on to share some exciting news about the future of space travel, discussing the upcoming launch of ‘truly a revolutionary rocket’.

Musk said: “Starship is the first rocket that has the potential to make life multi-planetary, make us a multi-planet civilization for the first time in the history of Earth and that’s truly profound.”