民营航天
Non-launched efforts > Mars exploration

In June 2012, private Dutch non-profit, Mars One, announced a private one-way (no return) human mission to Mars with the aim to establish a permanent human colony on Mars. The plan was to send a communication satellite and pathfinder lander to the planet by 2016 and, after several stages, land four humans on the Martian surface for permanent settlement in 2023. A new set of four astronauts would then arrive every two years.
Mars One has received a variety of criticism, mostly relating to medical, technical and financial feasibility. There are also unverified claims that Mars One is a scam designed to take as much money as possible from donors, including reality show contestants. Many have criticized the project's US$6 billion budget as being too low to successfully transport humans to Mars, to the point of being delusional. A similar project study by NASA estimated the cost of such a feat at US$100 billion, although that included transporting the astronauts back to Earth. Objections have also been raised regarding the reality TV project associated with the expedition. Given the transient nature of most reality TV ventures, many believe that as viewership declines, funding could significantly decrease, thereby harming the entire expedition. Further, contestants have reported that they were ranked based on their donations and funds raised.
In February 2013, the US nonprofit Inspiration Mars Foundation announced a plan to send a married couple on a 2018 mission to travel to Mars and back to Earth on a 501-day round trip, with no landing planned on Mars. The mission would have taken advantage of an infrequently occurring free return trajectory—a unique orbit opportunity which occurs only once every fifteen years—and will allow the space capsule to use the smallest possible amount of fuel to get it to Mars and back to Earth. The two-person American crew – a man and a woman – will orbit around Mars at a distance of 100英里（160） of the surface. "If anything goes wrong, the spacecraft should make its own way back to Earth — but with no possibility of any shortcuts home."
On September 27, 2016, at the 67th annual meeting of the International Astronautical Congress, Elon Musk unveiled substantial details of the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS) design for the transport vehicles—including size, construction material, number and type of engines, thrust, cargo and passenger payload capabilities, on-orbit propellant-tanker refills, representative transit times, etc.—as well as a few details of portions of the Mars-side and Earth-side infrastructure that SpaceX intends to build to support the flight vehicles. In addition, Musk championed a larger systemic vision, a vision for a bottom-up emergent order of other interested parties—whether companies, individuals, or governments—to utilize the new and radically lower-cost transport infrastructure to build up a sustainable human civilization on Mars, potentially, on numerous other locations around the Solar System, by innovating and meeting the demand that such a growing venture would occasion.
In July 2017, SpaceX made public plans for ITS based on a smaller launch vehicle and spacecraft. The new system architecture has "evolved quite a bit" since the November 2016 articulation of the very large "Interplanetary Transport System". A key driver of the new architecture is to make the new system useful for substantial Earth-orbit and cislunar launches so that the new system might pay for itself, in part, through economic spaceflight activities in the near-Earth space zone. The Super Heavy is designed to fulfill the Mars transportation goals while also launching satellites, servicing the ISS, flying humans and cargo to the Moon, and enabling ballistic transport of passengers on Earth as a substitute to long-haul airline flights.
Since March 2020, SpaceX conducted several test flights of their Starship spacecraft. The Starship is a fully reusable two-stage vehicle designed to take passengers and cargo to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. SpaceX had initially planned to have an orbital-flight in 2021. On Wednesday, May 5, 2021, the twelfth Starship prototype (SN15) made a 10 km suborbital flight and achieved soft landing. SpaceX is currently in the process of improving and understanding the Starship spacecraft.
Launch of a Proton rocket
First launch of the Pegasus rocket, from a NASA-owned B-52.
The SpaceX Dragon berthing with the ISS during its final demonstration mission, on 25 May 2012.
Artists impression of an asteroid mining spacecraft
Lockheed Martin VentureStar