Elon Musk founded SpaceX with the mission of making humans a multiplanetary species. In the coming years, SpaceX will launch a crew of 24 people through space and onto Mars, in a new kind of rocket called Starship. Over 80 million miles away, Mars is both desolate, and at the same time, full of limitless potential. Mars holds limitless possibilities. Since the ideal alignment for Earth and Mars only happens once every two years, there is only a small window to get everything right.

The future of space exploration is unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. Although we’ve been exploring space since the 1950s, today, for the first time ever, we are going to be using supersized spacecraft to supercharge our journey into the solar system. As far as we know, Earth is the only planet in the known universe to contain any form of life. However, these 24 bold adventurers will become the first of what will eventually become a Mars colony of tens of thousands of people willing to leave everything behind to forge a new life on a new planet.

But before going to Mars, Starship will first complete several lunar missions to establish the Artemis Base Camp on the moon. Artemis will allow astronauts to stay for longer periods of time and complete important research projects to prepare for people living on Mars. The Starship vehicle that’s being developed by SpaceX will be able to launch more payload, have more power, and fly more often than any rocket ever produced. The last Saturn 5 rocket was launched by NASA in 1973, and since then, there has never been a more powerful rocket, until now. Starship can be refueled to be launched over and over again. It will become the workhorse used to carry thousands of people and millions of tons of cargo throughout the solar system.

These are not small advances in rocketry or spacecraft. These are truly transformational technologies that are giving us completely new capabilities and changing the paradigm for space exploration.