BRINGING HUMANS TO MARS Elon Musk stood on stage and looked out at the audience Members of the International Astronautical Federation filled the room Behind Musk was a huge image of Mars The date was September 27 2016 Scientists space industry experts and reporters had come to the meeting in Mexico They were there to hear about Musk’s plan Musk is the head of Space Exploration Technologies or SpaceX One of his company’s goals is to colonize Mars Musk explained his plan to bring humans to Mars on September 27 2016 5
THE FOURTH FALCON ROCKET When Musk started SpaceX in 2002 he planned to buy a booster rocket from the Russian space program This didn’t work out so Musk and his team used NASA technology to build their own They named it the Falcon rocket Their first three rocket launches failed SpaceX was losing millions of dollars Musk launched a fourth rocket in September 2008 It became the first privately built rocket to enter Earth orbit During the same year SpaceX got a multibillion-dollar contract with NASA to carry supplies to and from the International Space Station Musk explained his project to the crowd He is working on building rockets that can take people to Mars Musk believes having a second planet for human life is important He thinks that in the future Earth will experience an extinction event that will kill all humans MAKING A HOME ON MARS Musk has a plan to make it less costly to send people into space He is working to make rockets reusable Musk has used technology from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA to create 6
SpaceX launches a Falcon 9 rocket at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California rockets NASA is the US space agency It uses rockets that are not reusable NASA has asked the government for money to build things such as reusable rockets but has been turned down 7
