Will Humans Live on Mars by 2035?

Let me be honest with you upfront. When I started researching this piece, I expected to write a triumphant “we’re going to Mars!” narrative. And then February 2026 happened. Elon Musk announced a delay of roughly five to seven years to SpaceX’s Mars ambitions, pivoting instead to building a lunar base. The 2026 uncrewed Mars launches? Quietly shelved. Wikipedia’s SpaceX Mars page now reads: “In 2026, SpaceX deprioritized its Mars ambitions in order to focus on other projects.”

That’s not a minor footnote. That’s the main story. And most of the articles you’ll find out there were written before this happened — they’re still cheerfully citing “2026 uncrewed missions” as if nothing changed. So here’s the honest, current picture — the breakthroughs, the biological nightmares, the real timelines, and why none of this means Mars is off the table. It’s just a lot further away than Musk’s slides suggested.

1. What “Living on Mars” Actually Means (and Why It Matters)

There’s a crucial distinction most articles gloss over: the difference between visiting Mars and living there. Planting a flag and coming home is a flags-and-footprints mission. Actually living on Mars means self-sustaining settlements — closed-loop life support, local food production, local propellant manufacturing, and a population that doesn’t depend on Earth for survival every six months.

NASA has never formally embraced permanent settlement as a goal. Their CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog) missions, with the latest cycle beginning in October 2025, simulate year-long stays in a 3D-printed habitat at Johnson Space Center — useful data, but still firmly in the “extended visit” category. SpaceX’s publicly stated vision is bolder: a self-sustaining city of a million people. The gap between those two ambitions is not a PR difference. It’s decades and trillions of dollars.

For this piece, I’m treating “living on Mars” as the full spectrum — from first crewed landings through permanent outposts. Because you need to understand each phase to know which parts are achievable and which are sci-fi.

2. What’s Actually Happening Right Now (April 2026 Update)

Here’s the current state of play, verified as of April 2026:

• Feb. 2026

  Musk announces a 5–7 year delay to Mars plans, citing the need to focus on lunar missions first. SpaceX reportedly told investors it would “prioritize going to the moon first.” The 2026 uncrewed Mars missions are off.

• May 2025

  Musk’s updated Mars presentation estimated a 50% chance of being ready for the 2026/27 launch window — which itself was contingent on demonstrating orbital refueling. That demo hasn’t happened.

• 2025

  A 2024 Nature feasibility study concluded that a crewed Mars mission using Starship faces “several fundamental engineering constraints” that make the plan unworkable in its current form — particularly the 60+ tanker launches needed to fuel a single Mars-bound Starship.

• Oct. 2025

  NASA’s CHAPEA second analog mission begins. Results from the first cycle showed crews managing adequately but highlighted psychological friction as the most persistent challenge — not technical failures.

• 2026 (current)

  NASA’s Artemis 2 — a crewed lunar flyby — is proceeding. This is the actual stepping stone to Mars. Without Moon mastery, Mars doesn’t happen. SpaceX’s Starship must first serve as a lunar lander before it touches Martian soil.

3. The Biology Problem Nobody Wants to Talk About

The engineering challenges get all the press. Orbital refueling, heat shield testing, landing on a thin atmosphere — these are spectacular problems. But the biology? That’s where things get genuinely sobering, and a lot of the coverage is still catching up.

Here’s the part that genuinely surprised me while researching this: the bone loss mechanism debate is still active. For years, radiation got the blame. A March 2025 NASA study (published in PLOS ONE) found that site-specific bone loss in space is actually driven mostly by the lack of mechanical loading — you lose bone in weight-bearing bones because you’re not standing on them the way Earth makes you. Mars at 38% gravity won’t fix this. Astronauts on the ISS do intense daily exercise to manage it; that worked for 6-month stays. What happens over a multi-year Mars mission is genuinely unknown.

And reproduction? Nobody’s funding that research seriously. Children born on Mars in partial gravity — we genuinely don’t know what that does to development. The reproduction question may be the single biggest unaddressed barrier to permanent human settlement.

4. The Engineering Challenges — And Where Real Progress Exists

Not all doom and gloom. Real, verifiable progress has happened. Let me separate the genuine advances from the vaporware.

Where SpaceX Has Actually Delivered

Starship’s iterative development program has been genuinely impressive by historical rocketry standards. By mid-2025, the vehicle achieved multiple successful re-entries and splashdowns after several years of explosive learning curves. The “chopstick” booster catch — landing the Super Heavy booster back on the launch tower’s mechanical arms — worked. That’s not hype. That’s a legitimately historic piece of aerospace engineering.

The problem is orbital refueling. To reach Mars, each Starship needs roughly 1,200 tonnes of propellant. A tanker Starship carries about 100 tonnes. That’s 12 tanker flights per Mars-bound ship — and SpaceX planned five ships for the first uncrewed wave, requiring approximately 60 tanker launches. A full propellant transfer between two separate Starships in orbit has never been demonstrated. SpaceX planned to do it in 2026. It didn’t happen.

ISRU — The Overlooked Game-Changer

In-situ resource utilization is genuinely the most important technology for Mars habitation, and it gets less coverage than rocket aesthetics. NASA’s MOXIE experiment on the Perseverance rover demonstrated oxygen production from Martian CO₂ — a small-scale proof of concept that works. Scaling that to supply a crew is a different challenge, but the chemistry is sound.

Water ice at accessible depths remains uncertain. Water on Mars exists, but confirmed subsurface ice accessible for drilling may be 10–20 km deep in some regions — essentially requiring industrial mining infrastructure on a planet where we’ve never even landed humans. Surface-level ice exists at the poles and has been detected in shallow mid-latitude deposits, which is more promising for practical use.

5. The Realistic Timeline: What the Evidence Actually Supports

I spent several hours cross-referencing timelines from aerospace engineers, NASA documents, SpaceX presentations, and independent researchers. Here’s the most defensible outlook, stripped of PR optimism:

• 2026–2029

  Lunar phase dominates. SpaceX focuses on NASA Artemis lunar lander missions. Starship orbital refueling demonstrations continue. No Mars missions in this window.

• 2028–2030

  Potential uncrewed Mars precursors — if orbital refueling succeeds. Optimus robots, power infrastructure, ISRU equipment. Even this requires everything going right.

• 2031–2035

  First crewed Mars landing (optimistic scenario). Short surface stay, heavy Earth dependence, extreme risk. NASA’s aspirational window; SpaceX’s revised realistic window.

• 2035–2045

  Repeated campaigns, longer stays, expanding ISRU capability. This is where “outpost” becomes a meaningful description.

• 2050s+

  Transition toward sustained bases with local propellant and food production. The beginning — only the beginning — of genuine habitation.

Self-sustaining settlement? The engineering, biology, and logistics suggest we’re talking 2060s at the absolute minimum, more likely later. Anyone telling you 2035 with a straight face is selling something.

6. Why Mars Still Makes Sense — The Honest Case

Here’s where I push back against my own skepticism. The delays and challenges are real. But dismissing Mars colonization as fantasy is also wrong — it just requires an honest accounting of what “eventual” means.

The multi-planetary argument is logically sound: concentrating all of human civilization on one planet with one magnetosphere, one asteroid trajectory, one volcanic superpower is a bet with long odds over a long enough timeline. Not this century, probably, but the philosophical case is genuine. The question is whether SpaceX’s commercial model can actually get us there, or whether it requires the kind of sustained state-level commitment we’ve never demonstrated in peacetime for any project.

The Moon-first approach — which is now the actual plan — is arguably more sensible than the direct-to-Mars narrative that dominated headlines between 2016 and 2025. You’re 3 days from help on the Moon. You’re 6–24 months from help on Mars. Getting Moon habitation right before scaling to Mars isn’t cowardice; it’s engineering discipline. The tech that works on the Moon becomes the foundation for Mars. The tech that fails there fails at a recoverable distance.

And the science case remains extraordinary. Mars astrobiology — the search for past or present microbial life — is one of the most profound questions in human history. Perseverance’s sample caching program is building toward an eventual Mars Sample Return that could answer it. Whether humans need to be there to make that science happen is debatable. But the question itself is worth the ambition.

7. Common Mistakes in Mars Coverage (and How to Think Clearly)

FAQ: The Questions People Actually Have

• When will the first humans land on Mars?

  Based on current trajectories as of April 2026: NASA targets the 2030s–2040s. SpaceX’s revised optimistic window is 2031 at the earliest, with a more realistic expectation of mid-2030s — and that’s the first crewed landing, not habitation. The 2026 uncrewed missions have been delayed.

• What’s the biggest challenge for living on Mars?

  Radiation during transit, followed closely by closed-loop life support and psychological isolation. A key finding from a 2025 NASA study is that bone loss at 38% Martian gravity remains poorly understood for multi-year stays — and that gap has serious implications for permanent settlement.

• Is there water on Mars?

  Yes — water ice exists at the poles and in shallow mid-latitude deposits. However, deep subsurface liquid water (potentially kilometres down) would require industrial drilling infrastructure. Accessible surface ice is the more practical short-term resource.

• Why did SpaceX delay Mars missions in 2026?

  Musk announced in February 2026 that SpaceX would prioritize lunar missions for the next 5–7 years. SpaceX reportedly told investors it would “prioritize going to the moon first.” Orbital refueling — essential for Mars — also hasn’t been demonstrated between two separate spacecraft.

• Can Mars be terraformed?

  Theoretically, over centuries or millennia. Current modelling suggests Mars lacks sufficient CO₂ reserves to produce a thick enough atmosphere through greenhouse warming alone. Any terraforming timeline is civilizational-scale, not a 21st-century project.

• How long does it take to travel to Mars?

  7–9 months one-way, depending on orbital alignment. Earth and Mars align for launch every 26 months — miss the window and you wait. A round trip, including surface time, typically requires 18–30 months away from Earth.

Related on FutureNow

Artemis 2: What Happens When We Go Back to the Moon   The $1 Trillion Space Economy: Who’s Actually Winning   ISRU Explained: Mining Mars for Survival   Starship: What It Can and Cannot Do