SpaceX, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, has entered into an agreement with NASA to send his Red Dragon spacecraft to Mars as early as 2018, NASA reports.

The announcement was made Wednesday, through the company's social media account.


NASA said the variant of the Dragon 2 spacecraft will be launched by the Falcon Heavy rocket from SpaceX's Pad 39A, at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), ahead of a soft landing on the surface of Mars.

In a tweet, Musk said Dragon 2 is designed to be able to land anywhere in the solar system. However, he would not recommend loading space crews in the spaceship yet because of the "SUV" size of the capsule.

Dragon capsule was designed to send both cargo and people into space, but it only currently delivers cargo. In fact, it has been making trips to the International Space Station since 2010.

 Science Alert reports that SpaceX released a video in 2011, showing how they were going to re-land a rocket booster after launching it to space. And in 2015, they began attempting to land their rockets exactly how they had envisioned in the video.

Aside from targeting to gain further information about the red planet, TIME said the missions will "help demonstrate the technologies needed to land large payloads" on Mars and provide insight on the planet's colonization architecture.

SpaceX has been developing rockets and has a $1.6 billion contract with NASA to supply the International Space Station. Last December SpaceX successfully landed its Falcon-9 unmanned rocket upright.

John Logsdon, a noted space historian and a professor emeritus at George Washington University told Washington Post in interview that SpaceX pushes "the limits of feasibility." However, he also commends the company's engineering prowess and said it was smart to partner with NASA.

Tags SpaceX dragon, Mars, Red Planet, Elon Musk, NASA

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