Last year, SpaceX revealed a bold plan to launch the Dragon spacecraft to Mars in 2018. This should be the first-ever private mission to the Red Planet. But now it looks like the company has postponed the mission for a couple of years. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell has confirmed that SpaceX is now considering 2020 for a Mars trip. This step will allow the company to better understand its other ambitious projects.
“We were targeting 2018 but felt we needed more resources and decided to focus more on our manned program and the Heavy Falcon,” Shotwell said during a prelaunch press conference in Cape Canaveral, Florida. "So we are planning for 2020."
The mission, known as the Red Dragon, is to test the technology needed to land heavy equipment on the Martian surface - an extremely difficult task. Mars has a particularly thin atmosphere, providing very little friction to slow the incoming spacecraft. Heavy loads increase the risk of hitting the ground. Even government agencies have had trouble dealing with this issue.
Unlike other Mars lander, SpaceX's Red Dragon is designed to descend to the surface using rocket motors built into its hull, a technique known as retro supersonic propulsion. If successful, this craft will be the largest ever to land on the Red Planet. But for now we will have to wait almost four years to see this. SpaceX had to postpone the mission for two years because the launch opportunity is good at exactly that interval. Journeys to Mars are best started every 26 months, when the planet aligns with Earth in its orbit.
SpaceX, meanwhile, will now have more time to work on its other big things, such as the first launch of Falcon Heavy - a heavier version of the Falcon 9 rocket - slated for this summer, Shotwell said. SpaceX is also updating its Dragon capsule so that it can carry astronauts to the International Space Station. The company intends to launch a crew aboard the spacecraft in 2018, but this event may also be postponed for various reasons. More precisely, it could if the Red Dragon mission took place according to the original schedule.
If SpaceX does indeed launch its spacecraft to Mars in 2020, it will have to fly side by side with other vehicles. NASA is sending a new rover to Mars in 2020 too; Also in the same year, the rover will go as part of the Exomars mission, a joint project of Roscosmos and the European Space Agency. The UAE plans to send an orbiter to Mars in 2020, and China has expressed a desire to reach Mars by the end of the decade.
ILYA KHEL