Gadgetory

Elon Musk has made it clear he wants to colonize Mars and now he's taking a big first step toward making that dream a reality his company SpaceX announced that it plans to start sending spacecraft to the Red Planet as early as 2018 that means SpaceX could be the first private company to land Hardware on another planet the idea is to test out how to land large payloads on the Martian surface to do that SpaceX will be sitting over its red dragon vehicle it's a modified version of the dragon cargo capsule that SpaceX uses to deliver supplies to the International Space Station the red dragon has eight super Draco engines embedded in its hull during the descent to Mars the engines will fire allowing the spacecraft to land gently and in a controlled manner it's a technique known as propulsive landing and it's similar to how SpaceX lands its Falcon 9 but landing a spacecraft on Mars is a lot harder than landing one on earth the Martian atmosphere is 100 the density of Earth's atmosphere so provides less cushion for incoming spacecraft that means really heavy objects from the risk of slamming into the Martian surface if they aren't slowed down enough right now NASA only knows how to land 2,000 pounds on Mars but with propulsive landings even more weight could get to the surface safely SpaceX is red dragon would be five to ten times larger than anything ever landed on Mars there's still a lot to do before the red dragon missions can happen though SpaceX plans to transport the spacecraft to Mars using its Falcon Heavy a souped up version of the Falcon 9 the Falcon Heavy is still in development though so it has yet to fly the Spacek says the Rockets first flight is supposed to happen in November of this year also SpaceX has never landed the dragon using the super Draco's before it's used the engines to make the vehicle ascend and even hover but never land spacex will try to propulsively land a dragon cargo capsule on earth first after it turns from a station supply run the red dragon missions are all privately funded but SpaceX is still getting some help from NASA the space agency said it will provide technical support to the company in exchange for data regarding the dragons landing attempts meanwhile NASA is still hoping to send its own astronauts to Mars in the mid 2030s but with SpaceX in the private company may be closer to doing it first want to learn more about how SpaceX lands its rockets check out our video on how they pulled it off or if you need an even more ambitious space exploration goal check out our video on star shot which involves sending a spacecraft to Alpha Centauri with a laser okay