Capsule may not go to Mars after all
LOS ANGELES — SpaceX may have canceled its mission to Mars with a Red Dragon capsule that was set for 2020.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk retweeted a story late Friday afternoon titled “SpaceX skipping Red Dragon for ‘vastly bigger ships’ on Mars” that was published on Tesla enthusiasts blog Teslarati.
The news comes after Musk said the space company was no longer planning to land its Dragon 2 space capsule using rocket thrusters. The Dragon 2 capsule, which in this case would fly without a crew, was the centerpiece of SpaceX’s Red Dragon mission.
At the International Space Station Research and Development Conference in Washington, D.C., Musk said that while the capsule is still technically capable of powered landings, it would have to touch down on a “pretty soft landing pad” because SpaceX deleted the legs that pop out of the Dragon 2’s heat shield.
Musk said the Dragon approach to landing on Mars was “no longer in line with what we were confident was the optimal way of landing on Mars.” Later that day, he replied to a journalist’s tweet, saying, “Plan is to do powered landings on Mars for sure, but with a vastly bigger ship.”