Sending people to Mars

various · Multinational · Program · 2026 · AnnouncedPlanned

An aspiration with no programme behind it: as of 28 September 2026 we could find no funded human Mars programme, approved architecture or committed landing date anywhere. US space policy sets no Mars date, and its dated human exploration goals are all lunar.

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TL;DR· 15 min read

Nobody knows when humans will go to Mars. As of 28 September 2026 there was no funded human Mars programme at NASA, ESA, CNSA, ISRO, JAXA or Roscosmos, and no approved architecture or committed landing date anywhere. The US executive order that directs space policy gives dated human exploration goals only for the Moon, and SpaceX said in February 2026 that it had shifted focus to a lunar city and would begin a Mars city in about five to seven years. Starship, which every private Mars plan depends on, reached orbit for the first time on its fourteenth flight, on 28 September 2026, and has not yet transferred propellant between vehicles in space.

The honest answer to "when will humans go to Mars" is that nobody knows, and that almost everyone who has given a date has been wrong. As of 28 September 2026 the farthest any human has been from Earth is still a lunar flyby: Artemis II carried four astronauts around the Moon between 1 and 10 April 2026, the first crewed flight beyond low Earth orbit since 1972. We could find no funded human Mars programme at NASA, ESA, CNSA, ISRO, JAXA or Roscosmos. What exists instead is a stack of national policy language; a lunar programme that is officially justified partly as Mars preparation; one robotic nuclear-propulsion demonstrator, targeted as of September 2026 to launch in late 2028, whose helicopters would scout possible human landing sites after reaching the surface in autumn 2030; and a private company whose Mars plans depend on a rocket that first reached orbit on 28 September 2026 and has not yet transferred propellant between vehicles in space.

  • 0funded human Mars programmes we could find, September 2026
  • 37 yrssince the 1989 Space Exploration Initiative set a Mars goal
  • 14Starship flights to 28 September 2026; only the fourteenth reached orbit
NASA artist's concept published in June 2019 depicting astronauts and human habitats on the surface of Mars. Nothing in the picture exists; no crewed Mars mission has been funded or approved.
NASA's 2019 illustration of astronauts and habitats on Mars: an artist's idea of what that might look like, with no approved mission behind it. NASA/JPL-Caltech

There is a reliable pattern in the history of human Mars plans: the date is always about fifteen to twenty-five years away, and it stays that far away as the years pass. On 20 July 1989, marking the twentieth anniversary of Apollo 11, President George H. W. Bush proposed going back to the Moon to stay and then "a journey into tomorrow, a journey to another planet: a manned mission to Mars". He set no date, asking the National Space Council to come back with costs and "realistic timetables". Nothing flew. On 15 April 2010 President Obama told an audience at Kennedy Space Center that "by the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth", and that a landing would follow. The mid-2030s are now close enough to check, and there is no funded crewed mission to Mars orbit. On 20 January 2025 President Trump used his inaugural address to promise astronauts who would "plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars". Eleven months later his own administration issued the executive order that actually directs American space policy, and that document, signed on 18 December 2025, contains two dated human exploration goals and both of them are lunar: crew back to the Moon by 2028, and initial elements of a permanent lunar outpost by 2030. Mars appears in it twice, both times as a reason to go to the Moon.

The corporate version of the pattern is faster and more visible. Elon Musk's public position on the Moon has flipped twice. In a July 2017 speech he said that if you want to get the public really fired up you have to have a base on the Moon, and at that year's International Astronautical Congress he complained that we should have had a lunar base by then. In January 2025, responding to a proposal to make Starship propellant from lunar oxygen, he wrote: "No, we're going straight to Mars. The Moon is a distraction." In May 2025, presenting at Starbase, he said progress was measured by the timeline to a self-sustaining civilisation on Mars, set out a plan growing from five ships in the window opening in late 2026 to 500 in 2033, and said of that first window: "We'll try to make that opportunity if we get lucky. I think we probably have a 50-50 chance right now because we've got to figure out orbital refilling in order to have enough capability to go to Mars." On 8 February 2026 the position reversed again. SpaceX, he wrote, "has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon, as we can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years", and would "strive to build a Mars city and begin doing so in about 5 to 7 years, but the overriding priority is securing the future of civilization and the Moon is faster". Two days earlier the Wall Street Journal had reported that SpaceX told investors it was dropping the 2026 Mars attempt in favour of an uncrewed lunar landing as soon as March 2027. The late-2026 Mars window opens in November, and as of 28 September 2026 SpaceX has announced no mission to use it.

Underneath the announcements sits a hardware question that is easier to check than any date. Every Starship Mars architecture requires the vehicle to reach orbit, then be refuelled there by other Starships, before it has the energy to leave for Mars. As of SpaceX's earnings call on 4 August 2026, Starship had flown thirteen integrated flight tests and had not yet reached orbit. Flight 13 in July 2026 flew a suborbital trajectory; it deployed 20 Starlink V3 satellites, which reentered with the ship, and the ship survived splashdown and was left floating in the Indian Ocean. Flight 14 was meant to be the first orbital delivery. Announced on 4 August for the end of that month, it slipped into September, and by 20 August Musk had dropped the plan to catch the upper stage on this flight. It flew on 28 September, reached orbit for the first time and deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites. SpaceX has still not demonstrated propellant transfer between two vehicles in space; SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell described it on the 4 August earnings call as critical both to SpaceX's own ambitions and to the lunar lander it owes NASA. None of this means Starship will not work. It does mean that as of 28 September 2026 the vehicle on which every private human Mars plan depends has done only the first of the two things those plans start with.

What is actually funded and moving is lunar, plus one robotic Mars precursor. Artemis II flew four astronauts around the Moon in April 2026, the first crewed flight beyond low Earth orbit since 1972, and as of September 2026 the only one. Artemis III, restructured in February 2026 into an Earth-orbit rendezvous and docking test with uncrewed Blue Moon MK2 and Starship HLS articles, is targeted for 2027; Artemis IV is the intended landing, in 2028. NASA's "Ignition" event on 24 March 2026 announced that the agency intends to pause the lunar Gateway in its current form and set out a three-phase Moon base with roughly $10 billion per phase. The one item aimed squarely at Mars is SR-1 Freedom, a 20 kilowatt nuclear electric propulsion demonstrator built around the Gateway's power and propulsion element, targeted as of September 2026 to launch in late 2028 with SkyFall aboard and to fly past Mars in 2029; SkyFall's three Ingenuity-class helicopters are to reach the surface on a second approach to Mars, in autumn 2030, to survey candidate human landing sites and hunt for subsurface ice. In a SpaceNews commentary of 15 July 2026, Bruce Jakosky, Scott Hubbard, Jennifer Rochlis and Timothy Kokan summed up their case in one sentence, "we're not yet ready to send people to Mars", and argued that the engineering, the human health limits, the science and the planetary protection still have to be brought together into a single mission design.

Mission facts

Current US policy

Executive Order 14369, "Ensuring American Space Superiority", signed 18 December 2025 and published 23 December 2025. It sets two dated human exploration goals, both lunar: returning Americans to the Moon by 2028 through Artemis, and "establishing initial elements of a permanent lunar outpost by 2030". Mars appears exactly twice in the whole order, both times as justification, to "prepare for the journey to Mars" and "enable the next steps in Mars exploration". No Mars date is given anywhere in the order.↗

The 2026 transport policy

National Security Presidential Memorandum 17, "The National Space Transportation Policy", signed 20 August 2026 and published 25 August 2026, directs the NASA Administrator to "explore commercial robotic access to the surface of Mars" and to "explore commercial architectures for sending humans to the surface of Mars and returning them to Earth". It sets no Mars date and is to be carried out "subject to the availability of appropriations"; its only dated goal is that by 2030 US launch ranges must support more than 1,000 launches and reentries a year.↗

The 1989 goal

On 20 July 1989, the twentieth anniversary of Apollo 11, President George H. W. Bush proposed "Back to the Moon; back to the future. And this time, back to stay. And then a journey into tomorrow, a journey to another planet: a manned mission to Mars." He attached no date, asking the National Space Council to report back with "the necessary money, manpower, and materials" and "realistic timetables". Nothing flew from it.↗

The 2010 goal

At Kennedy Space Center on 15 April 2010, President Barack Obama said: "By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. And a landing on Mars will follow." Sixteen years later there is no funded crewed mission to Mars orbit.↗

The 2025 goal

In his inaugural address on 20 January 2025, President Donald Trump said the United States "will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars". No date or human Mars programme followed from that sentence. The administration's budget request of May 2025 proposed "$1 billion in new investments for Mars-focused programs", but we found no human Mars mission approved or funded since.↗

SpaceX's plan as of May 2025

In a presentation at Starbase in May 2025, Musk said "progress is measured by the timeline to establishing a self-sustaining civilization on Mars", and set out a "tentative game plan" of waves growing with each roughly two-yearly launch opportunity: five ships in the Mars window opening in late 2026, then 20 in 2028 to 2029, 100 in 2030 to 2031 and 500 in 2033.↗

The 50-50 caveat

In the same presentation, Musk put the odds of making the late-2026 window at "50-50", conditional on demonstrating orbital propellant transfer: "We'll try to make that opportunity if we get lucky."↗

SpaceX's 2026 pivot

On 8 February 2026 Musk posted that SpaceX "has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon, as we can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years", adding that SpaceX "will also strive to build a Mars city and begin doing so in about 5 to 7 years, but the overriding priority is securing the future of civilization and the Moon is faster". The Wall Street Journal had reported on 6 February 2026 that SpaceX had abandoned a 2026 Mars mission in favour of an uncrewed lunar landing as soon as March 2027.↗

The whiplash

In January 2025 Musk had written, of a proposal to make Starship propellant on the Moon: "No, we're going straight to Mars. The Moon is a distraction." In 2017 he had said the opposite, that a Moon base was what would get the public fired up.↗

Starship status

As of the SpaceX earnings call on 4 August 2026, Starship had flown thirteen integrated flight tests and had not yet reached orbit. Flight 13, in July 2026, was suborbital, deployed 20 Starlink V3 satellites that reentered with the ship, and left the ship floating intact in the Indian Ocean. Flight 14 was to be the first attempt to reach orbit with an operational payload. Announced on 4 August 2026 for the end of that month, it slipped into September, and Musk said on 20 August that SpaceX would "probably catch the ship with the tower in a few months" rather than on this flight. After a last slip from 22 September, it flew on 28 September 2026, entered orbit for the first time and deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites, then returned early to a controlled splashdown in the Pacific.↗

The missing capability

Propellant transfer between two vehicles in space has still not been demonstrated. SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said on 4 August 2026 that "propellant transfer in orbit is critical to both our internal SpaceX as well as our HLS ambitions". Every Starship Mars architecture depends on refuelling in Earth orbit before departure.↗

Where humans have actually been

Artemis II launched on 1 April 2026 and splashed down on 10 April 2026, a mission of 9 days, 1 hour and 32 minutes, carrying four astronauts on a crewed lunar flyby, the first crewed flight beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972. NASA's own page for the mission describes it as "a key step toward long-term return to the Moon and future missions to Mars". Artemis III, restructured in February 2026 into an Earth-orbit rendezvous and docking test with uncrewed Blue Moon MK2 and Starship HLS articles, is targeted as of September 2026 for 2027; Artemis IV, the intended first landing, for 2028.↗

The nearest thing to a Mars precursor

SR-1 Freedom, announced 24 March 2026, is a NASA nuclear electric propulsion demonstrator using a 20 kW HALEU reactor and the power and propulsion element built for the lunar Gateway, which NASA said the same day it intends to pause in its current form. As of September 2026 SR-1 Freedom is targeted to launch in late 2028 with SkyFall aboard and to fly past Mars in 2029. SkyFall, three Ingenuity-class helicopters that would survey candidate human landing sites and look for subsurface water ice, is to land after a second approach to Mars, in autumn 2030; NASA says this timeline will shift as the missions mature. In March 2026 NASA said it had not decided where the mission would end.↗

Cost of the lunar detour

NASA's Moon base plan, unveiled at its "Ignition" event on 24 March 2026, runs in three phases over about a decade at roughly $10 billion per phase, and Administrator Jared Isaacman said about $20 billion would be spent over the following seven years. NASA's cost estimate for SR-1 Freedom alone is $2.1 billion, not counting the SkyFall helicopters (Ars Technica, 1 September 2026).↗

What experts say is missing

A SpaceNews commentary of 15 July 2026 by Bruce Jakosky, Scott Hubbard, Jennifer Rochlis and Timothy Kokan stated flatly that "we're not yet ready to send people to Mars" and argued that engineering, human health, science and planetary protection must be integrated into one mission design now, before the main hardware is fixed.↗

China

China's crewed goal, restated by the China Manned Space Engineering Office on 23 May 2026, is a first Chinese landing on the Moon before 2030; Mars is not in it. Its next Mars mission is robotic: Tianwen-3, which the China National Space Administration said on 24 April 2026 is planned to launch around 2028 and return Martian samples around 2031. A 2009 Chinese Academy of Sciences roadmap forecast that China would have the capability for a crewed Mars landing around 2050, and senior Chinese rocket engineers have named about 2035 as the earliest possible date for a crewed Mars mission, but we found no approved or funded Chinese crewed Mars mission.↗

Dates and time zone

Policy documents, speeches and votes here are dated in Washington local time; spaceflight events are dated in UTC. Where a source gives only a month, this entry gives only a month.↗

Mission timeline

  1. 20 Jul 1989President George H. W. Bush proposes a return to the Moon and then "a manned mission to Mars", with no date attached and the National Space Council asked to come back with costs and realistic timetables. Nothing flew from it.
  2. 15 Apr 2010President Obama tells an audience at Kennedy Space Center that by the mid-2030s humans could orbit Mars, with a landing to follow.
  3. 2017Musk argues for a lunar base: "If you want to get the public really fired up, you've got to have a base on the moon," in a July 2017 speech, and at the International Astronautical Congress, "It's 2017. I mean, we should have a lunar base by now." He will reverse this position twice more.
  4. 20 Jan 2025President Trump's inaugural address promises American astronauts will plant the flag on Mars. No programme or date follows.
  5. May 2025Musk, presenting at Starbase, puts the chance of making the late-2026 Mars window at about 50 per cent and makes it conditional on demonstrating orbital propellant transfer.
  6. 18 Dec 2025Executive Order 14369 sets a 2028 crewed lunar return and initial elements of a permanent lunar outpost by 2030, and mentions Mars only as preparation.
  7. 6 to 9 Feb 2026The Wall Street Journal reports SpaceX has dropped a 2026 Mars mission in favour of an uncrewed lunar landing as soon as March 2027. Musk then confirms the shift publicly, saying SpaceX would begin building a Mars city "in about 5 to 7 years".
  8. 24 Mar 2026At NASA's "Ignition" event the agency says it intends to pause the lunar Gateway in its current form, and announces both a three-phase Moon base and SR-1 Freedom, a nuclear-electric spacecraft due to launch for Mars in 2028, carrying three small helicopters to scout possible human landing sites.
  9. Apr 2026Artemis II launches on 1 April and splashes down on 10 April, carrying four astronauts around the Moon: the first crewed flight beyond low Earth orbit since 1972, and as of 28 September 2026 the only one.
  10. 15 Jul 2026Four senior Mars figures argue in SpaceNews that "we're not yet ready to send people to Mars" and that the engineering, health, science and planetary-protection work for a human mission must be integrated now.
  11. 4 Aug 2026On its first earnings call as a public company, SpaceX says Starship Flight 14 will attempt orbit and a tower catch of the upper stage. At that point Starship had not yet reached orbit or transferred propellant between two vehicles in space.
  12. 14 Aug 2026Administrator Jared Isaacman says he is "extremely confident" Artemis III will launch in 2027 as an Earth-orbit docking test, with the first lunar landing on Artemis IV in 2028. No NASA official states a human Mars date.
  13. 20 Aug 2026A presidential memorandum on space transportation (NSPM-17) directs NASA to "explore commercial architectures for sending humans to the surface of Mars and returning them to Earth". It sets no Mars date.
  14. 28 Sep 2026Starship Flight 14 reaches orbit for the first time and deploys 26 Starlink V3 satellites, then returns early to a controlled splashdown in the Pacific. Propellant transfer between two vehicles has still not been demonstrated.

A filled dot marks something that physically happened. A hollow one marks an announcement, a naming or a target.

In pictures

As far as anyone has actually gone: a photograph of the Moon through Orion's window during Artemis II, April 2026. Credit: NASA.

Tap a photo to enlarge.

Sources

Facts on this page were verified on 28 September 2026. Where sources disagree, the disagreement is stated rather than resolved silently.

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