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SpaceX could land Starship on Mars in 2024, says Elon Musk

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk believes Starship could attempt its first Mars landings as early as 2024. (SpaceX)

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Four years after Elon Musk revealed “aspirational” plans to launch Starships to Mars in 2022, the SpaceX CEO now believes that 2024 is a more accurate target.

For SpaceX, that two-year ‘delay’ is more impressive than anything given that the company practically restarted Starship development from scratch a year after Musk set the 2022 target. In late 2018, after more than two years of work developing a Starship (then BFR) built out of carbon fiber composites, the CEO revealed that the company was going to completely redesign the rocket to use steel for all major structures.

Two and a half years after that decision, SpaceX has built a vast Starship factory capable of building at least one ship per month, cumulatively fired dozens of full-scale Raptor engines for more than 30,000+ seconds, flown eight full-scale prototypes, and recovered the first full-size Starship in one piece after a high-altitude launch and bellyflop-style descent and landing.

It doesn’t come as a huge surprise that Starship probably wont be attempting any Mars launches in 2022. Had SpaceX not had to return to the drawing board in 2018, Musk may well have been able to achieve that 2022 goal, but wholly redesigning Starship with steel almost certainly delayed development by at least a year. For interplanetary launches, the most efficient trajectories – those that allow a rocket to maximize payload capacity – are only open for several weeks every ~25 months. That means that a rocket that’s one year behind a Mars launch window will still have to wait more than two years for the next launch opportunity.

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An artist’s rendition of a base on Mars. (SpaceX)

In Starship’s case, even if SpaceX were ready for its first Mars cargo missions in 2023, it would need to wait until September or October 2024. That’s far from out of the question but three full years will arguably give SpaceX a good amount of time to both ensure that Starship is technically ready and reliable enough to land on Mars while also determining – and likely designing and building – the cargo those first Starships will carry.

SpaceX could also launch the first one or several Mars-bound Starships with an absolute minimum payload under the assumption that success will require several failures, in which case the company would have until 2026 to develop a system capable of finding and gathering Martian ice, processing it into cryogenic liquid oxygen and methane, and storing that propellant for months or even years. Without that complex system of in-situ resource utilization (ISRU), Starship will never be able to leave Mars, turning initial crewed missions into one-way trips.

Entering Mars’ atmosphere after an interplanetary launch from Earth – and vice versa – will be extraordinarily stressful for Starship’s heat shield. (SpaceX)

In the meantime, while SpaceX has successfully proven that Starship’s exotic skydiver-style landing is viable on planets with atmospheres, orbital Starship flight tests will likely pose just as many challenges. Starship will have the largest heat shield of any spacecraft ever built, while that heat shield will also be the first non-ablative shield ever developed by SpaceX. Even if Starship aces reentries from low Earth orbit (LEO), reentries from geostationary, lunar, or Mars transfer orbits are all multiple times more stressful, requiring still more testing to ensure that its ceramic heat shield and steel hull can withstand interplanetary velocity reentries.

SpaceX will also have to develop unprecedented thermal management solutions to keep hundreds of tons of cryogenic liquid propellant at the right temperatures for weeks, months, or even years in orbit, deep space, and on the surfaces of other moons and planets. This is all to say that SpaceX has its work cut out for it as it approaches the dawn of orbital Starship flight tests and has to tackle a number of daunting technical challenges it might end up being the first to solve. But, as SpaceX always has, it will devour each problem piece by piece until Starship is exactly as capable and revolutionary as the company and its CEO have long promised – if a bit behind schedule.

Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

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Tesla’s newest “Folding V4 Superchargers” are key to its most aggressive expansion yet

Tesla’s folding V4 Supercharger ships 33% more per truck, cuts deployment time and cost significantly.

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Tesla V4 Supercharger installation ramping in Europe

Tesla is rolling out a folding V4 Supercharger design, an engineering change that allows 33% more units to fit on a single delivery truck, cuts deployment time in half, and reduces overall installation cost by roughly 20%.

The folding mechanism addresses one of the least glamorous but most consequential bottlenecks in charging infrastructure: getting hardware from factory floor to job site efficiently. By collapsing the form factor for transit and unfolding into an operational configuration on arrival, the new design dramatically reduces the logistics overhead that has historically slowed Supercharger rollouts, particularly at large or remote sites where multiple units are needed simultaneously.

The timing aligns with a broader acceleration in Tesla’s network strategy. In March 2026, Tesla’s Gigafactory New York produced its final V3 Supercharger cabinet after more than seven years and 15,000 units, pivoting entirely to V4 cabinet production. The V4 cabinet itself is already a generational leap, delivering up to 500 kW per stall for passenger vehicles and up to 1.2 MW for the Tesla Semi, while supporting twice the stalls per cabinet at three times the power density of its predecessor. The folding transport innovation layers logistical efficiency on top of that technical foundation.

Tesla launches first ‘true’ East Coast V4 Supercharger: here’s what that means

Tesla Charging’s Director Max de Zegher, commenting on the V4 cabinet when it launched, captured the operational philosophy behind these changes: “Posts can peak up to 500kW for cars, but we need less than 1MW across 8 posts to deliver maximum power to cars 99% of the time.” The design philosophy has always been about maximizing real-world throughput, not just peak specs, and the folding transport upgrade extends that thinking into the supply chain itself.

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The Boring Company clears final Nashville hurdle: Music City loop is full speed ahead

The Boring Company has cleared its final Nashville hurdles, putting the Music City Loop on track for 2026.

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The Boring Company has cleared one of its most significant regulatory milestones yet, securing a key easement from the Music City Center in Nashville just days ago, the latest in a series of approvals that have pushed the Music City Loop project firmly into construction reality.

On March 24, 2026, the Convention Center Authority voted to grant The Boring Company access to an easement along the west side of the Music City Center property, allowing tunneling beneath the privately owned venue. The move follows a unanimous 7-0 vote by the Metro Nashville Airport Authority on February 18, and a joint state and federal approval from the Tennessee Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration on February 25. Together, these green lights have cleared the path for a roughly 10-mile underground tunnel connecting downtown Nashville to Nashville International Airport, with potential extensions into midtown along West End Avenue.

Music City Loop could highlight The Boring Company’s real disruption

Nashville was selected by The Boring Company largely because of its rapid population growth and the strain that growth has placed on surface infrastructure. Traffic has become a persistent problem for residents, convention visitors, and airport travelers alike. The Music City Loop promises an approximately 8-minute underground transit time between downtown and the Nashville International Airport (BNA), removing thousands of vehicles from surface roads daily while operating as a fully electric, zero-emissions system at no cost to taxpayers.

The project fits squarely within a broader vision Musk has championed for years. In responding to a breakdown of the Loop’s construction costs, Musk posted on X: “Tunnels are so underrated.” The comment reflected a longstanding belief that underground transit represents one of the most cost-effective and scalable infrastructure solutions available. The Boring Company has claimed it can build 13 miles of twin tunnels in Nashville for between $240 million and $300 million total, a fraction of what comparable projects cost elsewhere in the country.

The Las Vegas Loop, The Boring Company’s first operational system, has served as a proof of concept. During the CONEXPO trade show in March 2026, the Vegas Loop transported approximately 82,000 passengers over five days at the Las Vegas Convention Center, demonstrating the system’s capacity during large-scale events. Nashville draws millions of convention visitors and tourists each year, and local business leaders have pointed to that same capacity as a major draw for supporting the project.

The Music City Loop was first announced in July 2025. Construction began within hours of the February 25 state approval, with The Boring Company’s Prufrock tunneling machine already in the ground the same evening. The first operational segment is targeted for late 2026, with the full route expected to be complete by 2029. The project represents one of the largest privately funded infrastructure efforts currently underway in the United States.

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Elon Musk demands Delaware Judge recuse herself after ‘support’ post celebrating $2B court loss

A banner on the post read “Katie McCormick supports this,” using LinkedIn’s heart-in-hand “support” icon, an endorsement stronger than a simple “like.” Musk’s lawyers argue the action creates “a perception of bias against Mr. Musk,” warranting immediate recusal to preserve judicial impartiality.

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Ministério Das Comunicações, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s legal team has filed a motion demanding that Delaware Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick disqualify herself from an ongoing high-stakes Tesla shareholder lawsuit.

The filing, submitted March 25, cites an apparent LinkedIn “support” reaction from McCormick’s account to a post celebrating a $2 billion jury verdict against Musk in a separate California securities-fraud case.

The move escalates long-simmering tensions between Musk, Tesla, and the Delaware judiciary, where McCormick previously presided over the landmark challenge to Musk’s record $56 billion 2018 compensation package.

Delaware Supreme Court reinstates Elon Musk’s 2018 Tesla CEO pay package

The LinkedIn post was written by Harry Plotkin, a Southern California jury consultant who assisted the plaintiffs who sued Musk over 2022 tweets about his Twitter acquisition. Plotkin praised the trial team for “standing up for the little guy against the richest man in the world.”

The New York Post initially reported the story.

A banner on the post read “Katie McCormick supports this,” using LinkedIn’s heart-in-hand “support” icon, an endorsement stronger than a simple “like.” Musk’s lawyers argue the action creates “a perception of bias against Mr. Musk,” warranting immediate recusal to preserve judicial impartiality.

McCormick swiftly denied intentional endorsement. In a letter to attorneys, she stated she was unaware of the interaction until LinkedIn notified her. She wrote:

“I either did not click the ‘support’ icon at all, or I did so accidentally. I do not believe that I did it accidentally.”

The chancellor maintains the reaction was inadvertent, but critics, including Musk allies, call the explanation implausible given the platform’s deliberate interface.

McCormick’s central role in the Tesla pay-package litigation underscores the stakes. In Tornetta v. Musk, in January 2024, she ruled the 2018 performance-based stock-option grant, potentially worth $56 billion at the time and now valued far higher, was invalid.

The package consisted of 12 tranches of options, each vesting only after Tesla achieved ambitious market-cap and operational milestones. McCormick found Musk exercised “transaction-specific control” over Tesla as a controlling stockholder, the board lacked sufficient independence, and proxy disclosures to shareholders were materially deficient.

Applying the entire-fairness standard, she concluded defendants failed to prove the deal was fair in process or price and ordered full rescission, an “unfathomable” remedy she described as necessary to deter fiduciary breaches.

After the ruling, Tesla shareholders ratified the package a second time in June 2024. McCormick rejected that ratification in December 2024, holding that post-trial votes could not cure defects.

Tesla appealed. On December 19 of last year, the Delaware Supreme Court unanimously reversed the rescission remedy while largely leaving McCormick’s liability findings intact. The high court deemed total unwinding inequitable and impractical, restoring the package but awarding the plaintiff only nominal $1 damages plus reduced attorneys’ fees. Musk ultimately received the full award.

The current recusal motion arises in yet another Tesla derivative suit before McCormick. Legal observers say granting it could signal heightened scrutiny of judicial social-media activity; denial might reinforce perceptions of an insular Delaware bench.

Broader fallout includes accelerated corporate migration out of Delaware, Musk himself moved Tesla’s incorporation to Texas after the first ruling, and renewed debate over whether the state’s specialized courts remain the gold standard for corporate governance disputes.

A decision is expected soon; whichever way it lands, the episode highlights the fragile balance between judicial independence and public confidence in high-profile litigation.

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