By William Gavin
SpaceX had initially planned to send a rocket filled with robots to Mars in 2026. Then progress stalled.
SpaceX has big plans for its Starship rocket. Versions of it are instrumental to the company’s plans for missions to the moon and Mars.
SpaceX is unlikely to attempt a Mars mission in 2026 after all, according to CEO Elon Musk, marking a setback in his plans to colonize the planet.
“It would be a low-probability shot and somewhat of a distraction,” Musk told entrepreneur Peter Diamandis in a podcast recorded in late December and published this week.
In September 2024, Musk discussed SpaceX’s plans to send an uncrewed Starship rocket to Mars this coming year. At the time, Musk said the mission would test how reliably SpaceX could land its vehicles on the planet’s surface. If things went well, he estimated SpaceX could send crewed missions as soon as 2028.
But Musk has dialed back his optimism over the past year. In May, he gave his company a 50% chance of being ready for a launch in late 2026, which would coincide with a narrow window that occurs every two years when Mars and Earth align. A few months later, he said the uncrewed flight would “most likely” happen in 2029.
August 2025, Musk said there was a “slight chance” of a Starship flight to Mars in November or December 2026 crewed by Optimus, the humanoid robots being developed by Tesla (TSLA). “A lot needs to go right for that.”
A mission to Mars hinges on SpaceX being capable of refueling Starship’s upper stage in orbit, a complicated task that Musk told Diamandis could be achieved toward the end of 2026. Accomplishing orbital refueling is also crucial for SpaceX to complete a recently reopened contract to carry NASA astronauts to the moon.
Read more: What SpaceX, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab and others have in store for 2026
SpaceX was on track to demonstrate its process – which involves launching tanker versions of Starship into orbit – in 2025, a NASA official said the year before. But the company missed that target and now plans to attempt its first orbital-refueling demonstration between Starship vehicles in June, according to internal documents viewed by Politico.
SpaceX, which is now developing the third generation of the reusable 404-foot Starship rocket, has also had difficulty testing its vehicle. Its first three flights of 2025 were failures, while the remaining two launch attempts were much more successful. The next iteration of Starship will be a “massive upgrade” over its predecessor, Musk has said.
Also read: SpaceX, Anthropic and 4 more companies that could make an IPO splash in 2026
In addition to preparing for Mars and lunar missions, SpaceX dominates the commercial launch industry and runs a successful satellite-internet business. It plans to go public later this year in what could be a record-breaking listing that could help fund its plans for Starship as well as for space-based data centers.
Although SpaceX probably won’t be headed to the red planet in 2026, twin spacecraft will make the journey this year. Blue and Gold, a pair of satellites developed by Rocket Lab (RKLB), were launched into space last November by Amazon (AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin to fulfill NASA’s Escapade mission.
The spacecraft are expected to attempt a trans-Mars injection engine burn in November 2026 and arrive at the planet in September of next year, according to NASA. The satellites will be operated by the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, and will gather data that could help humans land on or even settle Mars.
Read: Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin matches SpaceX as it lands its mega-rocket’s booster
-William Gavin
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01-07-26 1120ET
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