Musk offered a prediction for the future of space travel.

Elon Musk, founder and CEO of both EV manufacturer Tesla and space agency SpaceX, has made no secret in recent years his zeal for making advancements in space travel. Last year, SpaceX, along with several other agencies, successfully sent manned vessels up into low orbit. A major threshold that Musk would very much like to cross, however, is a voyage to Mars.

New story on NPR: Elon Musk hints at a crewed mission to Mars in 2029 https://t.co/RCy2WvwJV8

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Earlier this week, a Twitter account named Space_Hub prompted users to guess when astronauts would successfully set foot on the surface of Mars, with the post specifically tagging Musk’s Twitter account. Musk responded, simply stating “2029.”

One of Musk’s major goals for SpaceX is to successfully construct a vessel that could ferry a human crew to Mars and allow them to establish a permanent city there. Back in 2016, during the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, Musk stressed that this goal is absolutely something that human engineers could accomplish in our current lifetimes, though he also said in that same year that it could take at least nine or ten years for the technology to reach the required threshold.

Elon Musk Has New Estimate for When Humans Might First Step on Mars, 2029,#ions #IonsSupportIons #ionsfollowions pic.twitter.com/EqhnvA4VCA

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At the moment, one of the world’s major efforts to reach Mars is the ExoMars mission in Europe, though unfortunately this mission has been indefinitely postponed due to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.