Elon Musk, who has long talked about an ambitious plan to colonize Mars, announced that he will send robots to the far-flung planet — and it could begin sooner than expected.
On Thursday, Musk said Tesla’s Optimus robots, which were initially pitched as household assistants last year, will “hopefully” be sent to the red planet on a SpaceX flight by the end of next year.
“Starship will hopefully depart for Mars at the end of next year with Optimus explorer robots,” Musk, who owns both Tesla and SpaceX, wrote in a post on X.
Musk shared the news hours after U.S. President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead NASA, billionaire tech CEO Jared Isaacman, outlined his vision for space exploration at his nomination hearing, saying they can focus on both the moon and Mars simultaneously while prioritizing landing American astronauts on the red planet.
Putting humans on Mars has been a goal of Musk’s for some time, and SpaceX is developing the Starship Super Heavy to launch cargo and people to the moon and then onto Mars.
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While missions to Mars have traditionally taken between six and nine months, Musk has said that with the right technology, the time could be shortened to as little as 90 days.
Thursday, however, marks the first time Musk has publicly mentioned putting his autonomous humanoid, bipedal robots on a Mars mission, suggesting his goal is accelerating.
Experts say the timeline, while ambitious, leaves room for skepticism.
Derrick Pitts, chief astronomer at the Franklin Institute, told Newsweek: “If you start to look at the practical things, it’s going to take quite a bit of time to actually pull it off. Could it happen this decade? It could, but with a whole lot of risk. But if you give me three decades, I could see how the risk could possibly drop to an acceptable level.”
Chris Impey, a professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona, also weighed in on the readiness of Starship to travel to Mars, said: “If you take Starship as the vehicle, there were partial successes and partial failures. But it’s a long learning curve and so in my estimation, there’d have to be dozens of various Starship demonstrations and test launches before you could send humans on that perilous trip. There’s essentially no way humans are going to be on Mars while Trump is in office. It’s just not possible.”
Previously, Musk said an unmanned flight to Mars was being prepared for 2026 and that astronauts would follow a few years later.
The Optimus robots were unveiled at Tesla’s “We, Robot” event last October, and were touted as the future in household management, performing basic tasks and chores and later mingling with guests.
“It’ll do anything you want,” Musk said at the showcase. “It can be a teacher, babysit your kids. It can walk your dog, mow your lawn, get the groceries, just be your friend, serve drinks. Whatever you can think of, it will do.”
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