In October 2026, when will people land on Mars, and do experts believe it?

""The first Starships to Mars will launch in 2 years," Elon Musk posted on X.com this weekend ."

"If those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years,"

"NASA has not committed to a specific year but frames crewed Mars missions as a goal for the late 2030s or 2040s."

"Even Musk acknowledges that 2026 is ambitious, tweeting in early August that it was “more likely” the first uncrewed Starships would launch “in ~3.5 years, next flight ~5.5 years with humans.”"

"Musk said the launches will happen when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens, which the science blog NextBigFuture identifies as " about November through December 2026 ."

""Flight rate will grow exponentially from there, with the goal of building a self-sustaining city in about 20 years," Musk added in the same post."

"The general plan is sound, according to the 10 experts I spoke with for this piece, several of whom were retired NASA employees who oversaw previous Mars missions and contributed to the agency’s plans for sending its own astronauts to the red planet."

"Musk noted that the 2026 missions "will be uncrewed to test the reliability of landing intact on Mars,""

"“The notion they’re going to land a Starship on Mars that they launch next year is not true. If you disagree, I’ll bet you $1,000.”"

"Elon Musk has said that he believes there is a 50 percent chance that his Mars spacecraft will make its first uncrewed voyage to the red planet at the end of 2026"

""If those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years.""

"“A lot of people take it as a given that it will work, and there’s really no guarantee,” says Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the Planetary Society, about SpaceX, Starship and Mars."

"The first flight to Mars would carry a simulated crew consisting of Tesla-built humanoid Optimus robots. Human crews would then follow in the second or third landings."

"But Mars? Yeah, I don't think anybody's taking Musk's Mars timelines seriously :-)"

"He added that if Starship was not ready by that time, SpaceX would wait another two years before trying again."

"These efforts are a stepping stone towards launching NASA astronauts to Mars sometime in the 2030s."

"In 2016, Musk said he wanted to send an uncrewed SpaceX vehicle to Mars as early as 2018, while he was targeting 2024 to launch the first crewed mission there."

"If the uncrewed missions land safely, crewed missions will be launched in four years."

"A target application of a 2039 human-rated Mars mission was outlined in the TMP."

"Mars has such low atmospheric density that decelerating large masses (tens of metric tons) requires methods that have not yet been demonstrated, and are not yet planned in future Mars missions."

"the five critical technology elements of NEP vehicles have yet to prove technical maturity levels for consideration into mission design."

"SRP is at a low Technology Readiness Level (TRL) in that the interacting plumes are not well-characterized, and their effect on vehicle stability has not been studied, to date."

"they proposed an optimistic campaign to locate and characterize putative accessible ice resources near a potential landing site"

"In response to the critical reviews by the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), NASA’s Space Nuclear Propulsion (SNP) project created an NEP Technology Maturation Plan (TMP) for focused development of NEP technology."

"The hypersonic IADs, or HIADs, are about 20% less massive than the rigid vehicles, but both have their technology development challenges."

"The problem in implementing this is that it would be risky to send a crew to Mars relying on this system for life support if there was no prior proven end-to-end system validated on Mars using representative human water intake and effluents."

"2030-2031 transfer window, where SpaceX intends to start sending humans to Mars. In this window, SpaceX wants 100 landers with 150 tons per ship to deliver, people, equipment for road and pad construction, habitat construction, and to increase the available power and storage capacity of what would be a Mars colony at this point."

"These are very ambitious goals for SpaceX, as nothing like this has ever been attempted in human history. Some of these goals will likely be pushed back by a transfer window or two."

"The pattern across the eight-year sequence is roughly consistent: Musk announces an ambitious Mars timeline approximately five years in advance, SpaceX makes substantial but not complete progress on the prerequisite technologies, the announced date arrives without the mission, and a new target is announced for the next transfer window."

"The next Mars transfer window opens in November 2026 and closes in December."

"Sometime within the first several decades of this 21st century, humans will likely venture to Mars, back to the Moon, and possibly to other locations within our solar system."

"the predominant viewpoint is still that a later human exploration phase, conducted in conjunction with accompanying robotic equipment, will bring powers of observation and decision making not anticipated from robots within the expected time frame of a first human mission to Mars."