NASA has been working with the aim of putting humans on Mars for a very long time. It’s not alone in this endeavor, many private companies on working on something similar, including Elon Musk’s SpaceX. According to a new report, SpaceX has been working with NASA to identify potential landing spots on the Red Planet. They will study the viability of the spots that they pick in a bid to figure out where the spacecraft would land.
This was revealed by Paul Wooster, who looks after navigation, guidance, and control systems of the Dragon capsule aside from working on SpaceX’s Mars plans.
He revealed to a conference in Texas that SpaceX has been working with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to find potential landing spots on the neighboring planet. He also added that they have identified one very strong candidate.
So what are the two look at when trying to decide where to land the spacecraft? Well, the spot has to be located in the vicinity of ice near the planet’s surface. It also has to be at a low elevation and positioned near the equator for more exposure to the Sun.
It’s unclear at this point in time when SpaceX is going to launch its Mars mission. It intended to do that by 2018 initially but has since delayed the mission to the 2020s.