SpaceX Plans on Reaching Mars by 2018
A private company called SpaceX is uncovering its ambition of reaching Mars two years from now. And while that's the kind of thing often seen and heard in sci-fi flicks, this one is the real deal thanks to a planned partnership with NASA.
The plan is for SpaceX and NASA to build a spacecraft that has the capabilities of landing on Mars to collect data. The craft, which reportedly will be named "Red Dragon," won't be taking any human passengers or crew.
In an effort to spark interest and publicity, the company made a clever post on their Facebook page that says "SpaceX is planning to send Dragons to Mars as early as 2018." It added that the missions (which means they're planning more than one), are designed to see if the current technologies we have right now are good enough to make it possible to "land large payloads propulsively on Mars."
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The man behind this ambitious plan is SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who believes that humans still can't make it pass the moon, at least in this current level of technology. While his company's spacecraft has room to carry humans, he does not believe they could survive the trip to the red planet.
The collaboration between a private company like SpaceX and the government's NASA is a promising development in man's never-ending fascination with space. While many astronomers, physicists, and engineers are looking beyond Mars in the hope of finding other planets that can possibly host life, SpaceX is keeping it close.
This isn't actually the first project focused on sending a craft to the planet that is believed to have been home to living organisms in the past. In 1965, NASA sent the Mariner 4 to probe the planet with the hope of landing a capsule there. But this time, the objective is a lot more ambitious since the proponents want to learn more about the possibility of what is ideally referred to as "interplanetary human travel."
