Elon Musk has once again reiterated his call to deorbit the International Space Station (ISS). The Tesla and SpaceX CEO shared a post on microblogging platform X (previously Twitter), writing: “
It’s time to retire the Space Station and focus on Mars”.
Musk’s comments came in response to a post that quoted another post about how the Big Beautiful Bill plans to spend money on space programs. The ISS, launched in 1998, has hosted over 3,000 experiments. A 2021 study in Nature Communications suggests its microgravity research may be nearing redundancy, supporting Musk’s push for Mars. In 2022, a NASA report estimated a $3-4 billion cost to extend its life, shifting resources to private companies like Axiom Space for new stations and Mars missions.Notably, this is not the first time that Musk called for deorbiting the ISS. In February this year, he posted on X: “It is time to begin preparations for deorbiting the @Space_Station. It has served its purpose. There is very little incremental utility. Let’s go to Mars.”
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In a follow up post, he then said that he was planning to recommend to President Donald Trump that the station be brought down “as soon as possible”.
Elon Musk aims to land humans on Mars by 2029
The tech billionaire has been vocal about his Mars missionposting about it on X several times. He envisions humanity’s future on Mars, driven by the need to safeguard civilization from Earth’s existential threats. So much so that he has often shared a timeline and also name of the first city on the red planet.According to Musk’s timeline, if these robotic landings prove successful, human missions to Mars could begin as soon as 2029, though he acknowledged that 2031 is a more realistic target date. “If those landings go well, then human landings may start as soon as 2029, although 2031 is more likely,” he added.He has previously proposed ‘Terminus’ as the name for the first Martian city.
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