ELON MUSK says he is highly confident that Spacex will launch their first crewed mission within 2026. He said that Starship will land humans on Mars “about six years from now.”

According to CNBC, the ambitious 2026 goal matches with what Musk outlined at the International Astronautical Congress in September 2016, when he said that “if things go super well,” landing people on Mars “might be kind of in the 10-year timeframe.”

On Tuesday, Elon Musk received Germany’s Axel Springer Award during a ceremony “An Evening for Elon Musk — Mission to Mars,” where he also talked about Spacex’s Mars mission and the ongoing development process. He also made some bold predictions, one of them was, Spacex will send a cargo mission within 2022 and eventually land human on Mars within 2026, exactly six years from now.

In the interview, Musk discussed about the development of Starship which aims to be the first fully reusable orbital launch vehicle in the world, capable of placing 100+ metric tons of cargo into low Earth orbit (LEO) at a cost of just a few million dollars per launch. Musk’s aim is to make Starship fully reusable — envisioning a rocket that is more akin to a commercial airplane, with short turnaround times between flights where the only major cost is fuel.

In the interview he also said that “I am mostly concerned with developing the technology that can enable a lot of people to go to Mars, and make life multiplanetary; have a base on the moon, a city on Mars, and I think it is important to have a self-sustaining city on Mars as soon as possible. I mean, I am optimistic about the future on Earth but its important to have insurance for life as a whole.”

By the way, SpaceX just successfully rocketed four astronauts into space. Making history by performing first operational mission into space. Earlier this year Spacex became the first privately held company to launch rocket aboard astronauts into space on the way to the International Space Station.

(SD-Agencies)