CancelledUncrewed Mars landing 2018
“Planning to send Dragon to Mars as soon as 2018. Red Dragons will inform overall Mars architecture, details…”
“Probably sooner”
See his original post on XLoads Elon's actual tweet, right here.
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What actually happened
No human has landed on the Moon. NASA's Artemis III crewed landing — which depends on Starship HLS — slipped from 2024 to 2025, then 2026, then to 2028 or later, with the GAO and NASA citing Starship development and orbital refueling as key drivers. As of mid-2026 Starship has not yet flown its uncrewed lunar-landing demo. Reuters — NASA delays crewed Artemis Moon missions again (Dec 2024) ↗
The Progression
Aug 15, 2021
Dec 31, 2024
Deadline passed. No human has landed on the Moon. NASA's Artemis III crewed landing — which depends on Starship HLS — slipped from 2024 to 2025, then 2026, then to 2028 or later, with the GAO and NASA citing Starship development and orbital refueling as key drivers. As of mid-2026 Starship has not yet flown its uncrewed lunar-landing demo. Reuters — NASA delays crewed Artemis Moon missions again (Dec 2024) ↗
Today · Jul 16, 2026
Status: Missed · 562 days past due. Never happened.
Four months after SpaceX won NASA's $2.9 billion Human Landing System contract, Musk replied 'Probably sooner' to whether Starship would be ready to land humans on the Moon by 2024. Artemis III has since slipped repeatedly — to 2026, then 2028 or beyond — with Starship's orbital refueling milestones a chief cause. No crewed landing had occurred by the 2024 deadline or since.
Receipts
LAST CHECKED 2026-07-08- [TWEET] Elon Musk on Twitter, August 15 2021, replying to the 'Everything Artemis' account asking whether Starship would be ready to land humans on the Moon by 2024 — verified via publish.x.com oEmbed
- [REPORT] Space.com, Aug 2021 — context: question asked and SpaceX's $2.9B NASA HLS award
More from the feed
Cancelled
PartialStarship reaches orbit
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goalposts: 2020 → 2022 · moved 1×
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← Creator ad revenue sharing 'starting today' (Feb 2023)
Giga Berlin and Giga Texas start production in 2021 →
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