Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX (CE0), a space exploration company selected as the U.S. lunar lander developer, says it can send people to the moon within three years.
Musk said this in connection with the NASA's Artemis project, which will bring humanity back to the moon by 2024, CNBC and others reported.
Musk said at a press conference after successfully launching a SpaceX spacecraft carrying four astronauts early this morning, "We aim to send people to the moon faster than in 2024." Said.
The Artemis Project is a project to bring humanity back to the moon half a century after the last lunar landing of the Apollo 17 in 1972, and NASA recently selected SpaceX as the developer of the lunar lander.
"It's been a great honor to be chosen as the operator to send people to the moon," Musk stressed. "It's been almost half a century since humans last arrived on the moon. We have to go back to the moon and build a permanent lunar base."
He added, "We must build a city on Mars to create a civilization that travels into space. We must not be a species living on a single planet (Earth), but a species living on multiple planets."
"It's got easier, but it still feels strong," he said about SpaceX's successful launch of its third manned spacecraft. "I couldn't sleep the day before the launch of the spacecraft, but it was the same this time."
SpaceX successfully launched a manned spacecraft for the first time in May last year, and in November it sent four astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).
In this launch, dubbed'Crew-2', SpaceX marked another milestone in sending astronauts to the ISS by recycling both rockets and spacecraft.