When SpaceX attempted to launch its newest (and tallest) megarocket yet on Thursday (May 21), all eyes were on the shiny Starship Version 3 atop its South Texas pad. Especially NASA’s, since the agency wants to use the towering rocketship to land Artemis astronauts on the moon in two years.
So it was a bit of a surprise when SpaceX, with less than 15 minutes remaining before liftoff, announced something new: A private Starship mission to Mars, a flyby expedition led by cryptocurrency billionaire Chun Wang.
“So it’s going to be a flyby mission of Mars,” Wang said in a recorded announcement unveiled by SpaceX during live launch commentary (the Starship V3 liftoff was ultimately scrubbed). “A lot of people talk about Mars. We like Mars, we’re gonna land on Mars. We’re gonna do a city on Mars. But let’s get it started with a flyby.”
SpaceX did not announce a target date or year for when Wang might launch to Mars (its Starships have not yet orbited Earth, let alone reached the moon or carried astronauts to space). Nor did SpaceX or Wang announce who might join the entrepreneur on the flight.
Wang, who already flew in space on the private SpaceX Dragon mission Fram2 over Earth’s poles in 2025, made the announcement while speaking with SpaceX’s Dan Huot from the extremely remote Bouvet Island in the South Atlantic Ocean, a lonely isle 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) southwest of South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope.
“It’s arguably one of the most remote islands in the world,” Wang said. But with this Starship Mars mission, Wang is looking for a place even more remote, and he’s not worried about being bored on the way. Huot said the mission includes long legs to and from Mars, with the flyby lasting just two hours.
“This is actually for my style of fireworks,” he told Huot. “I can stare at the map view on airplanes all the way from takeoff through landing, so I think I’m going to enjoy the trip.”
During Fram2, Wang and three other private astronauts on his crew made history as the first four people ever to fly over Earth’s poles during the 3.5-day mission. The Mars mission will make history as well, and even fly by the moon on the way to the Red Planet, SpaceX said.
“Even though it’s a flyby, it will try a lot of things never attempted before,” Wang said.
Wang isn’t the first billionaire to book a trip to the moon or beyond on a SpaceX Starship. He’s actually the fourth. So the question of when, or perhaps even IF, his Starship Mars mission will fly is a reasonable one to ask.
In 2018, Japanese billionaire Yusaka Maezawa announced a grand plan called dearMoon, which would use Starship to fly eight civilians — a mix of artists, performers, YouTube creators and more — to the moon and back. But Maezawa, who later flew to the International Space Station on a Russian Soyuz capsule (he actually bought two tickets, one for himself and another for a videographer), ultimately canceled that Starship trip in 2025 after years of waiting.
“I signed the contract in 2018 based on the assumption that dearMoon would launch by the end of 2023,” Maezawa said in a statement on X after canceling the flight. “It’s a developmental project, so it is what it is, but it is still uncertain as to when Starship can launch.” SpaceX founder Elon Musk first announced what would become the Starship program in 2016.
Then, in 2022, SpaceX found a new billionaire interested in Starship. It was Dennis Tito, who made history in 2001 when he became the world’s first space tourist to buy a ticket to the International Space Station, on a Russian Soyuz (for a reported $20 million). With SpaceX, he was likely putting down a lot more for a trip around the moon on Starship for himself and his wife Akiko.
“This program could prove to be one of the most important accomplishments in six million years of human history,” Tito said of Starship at the time. (Tito also once tried to assemble a private flyby of Mars by 2018 as part of his Inspiration Mars concept, but it depended heavily on the quick development of NASA’s Space Launch System megarocket, which did not fly until 2022).
Also in 2022, yet another billionaire booked a private Starship trip: American entrepreneur Jared Isaacman.
If that name sounds familiar, it should. Isaacman is the head of NASA now, serving as the space agency’s administrator after being nominated by the Trump administration, then called off, then re-nominated and finally confirmed by the Senate this past December.
Isaacman is also a seasoned pilot (he flies MiG jets and cofounded the Black Diamond Jet Team) who financed SpaceX’s first-ever private astronaut flight — Inspiration4 in 2021 — then bought three more flights with SpaceX as part of his Polaris Program. Those flights included Polaris Dawn in 2024, during which Isaacman performed the world’s first private spacewalk. A second Dragon flight was to come next, and be followed by the first crewed flight of a Starship vehicle. The latter two missions have not yet launched, and it is unlikely Isaacman will fly them while serving as NASA administrator.
Isaacman, though, is still betting on a crewed Starship flight soon, this time for NASA astronauts. NASA picked SpaceX to land its Artemis astronauts on the moon by 2028. Earlier this year, under Isaacman’s leadership, NASA restructured the schedule for that moon landing, which will now occur on the Artemis 4 mission.
SpaceX will likely attempt an uncrewed landing of Starship before that flight, and NASA hopes the company will have a Starship lander ready for an Earth orbit docking test by Artemis 3 astronauts in 2027.
Wang, meanwhile, believes his mission to Mars could help inspire people around the world to pursue interests in space exploration and the Red Planet.
“It will light the fire. It will ignite the imagination, and it will build the momentum,” Wang said in the SpaceX video. “After we come back from Mars, we will have the opportunity to take some real photos, especially of Mars. Mars will no longer become a distant place. It will become a reality.”