OREANDA-NEWS. The priorities of the space mission to Mars were set by the founder of SpaceX. In his opinion, the Starship spacecraft will begin flights and landings to the Red Planet long before 2030. And the main problem is not in the delivery of people from Earth to a neighboring planet, this is just not difficult, in his opinion, but in creating a self-sufficient permanent base for people to live on it. As Elon Musk wrote on his Twitter, "this is a really difficult threshold stage."

It is the difficulties in creating a habitable Martian base, according to Musk, that are the constraining factor for the development of Mars. As for flights to Mars, Musk is optimistic about 2025-2027.

And this is progress in the estimates of the businessman. As TASS explains, previously 49-year-old Elon Musk believed that he might not live to see the ship being sent to Mars. Musk emphasized that he founded SpaceX in 2002 to help humanity colonize Mars. It is for this mission that Elon Musk's company develops and tests the Starship spacecraft designed for 100 people.

In the meantime, the Musk company plans on March 24 to launch another 60 microsatellites for the Starlink network with a Falcon 9 rocket into orbit. The 23rd launch under the program will take place from the cosmodrome at Cape Canaveral.

The Starlink network is designed to provide global Internet access. For this, it is planned to launch 11 thousand satellites, each of which weighs no more than 500 kilograms. It costs 10 billion dollars to put them into operation.