Tech billionaire and SpaceX founder Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars with a million people in an effort to protect humanity from certain doom.
To that end, on Tuesday afternoon during a keynote talk at the 67th International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, Musk will unveil his ambitious plans to establish a human settlement on the red planet.
You can watch the event live on YouTube. (There's also an embedded video player at the end of this post.)
What will Musk reveal?
He's already teased a powerful new rocket engine— but that is only one small part of what will be a challenging plan to establish a permanent colony on a nearly airless planet that's typically 140 million miles from Earth.
Here's what we can expect Musk to talk about, starting at 2:30 p.m. EDT on September 27, 2016.
Kevin Loria, Kelly Dickerson, and Jessica Orwig contributed to this post.
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A Mars mission launching in 2018 or 2020.
In April 2016, SpaceX announced that it plans to send a Dragon spacecraft to Mars as soon as 2018. The mission would lay the groundwork for Elon Musk's goal to land humans on Mars.
"These missions will help demonstrate the technologies needed to land large payloads propulsively on Mars," SpaceX previously told Business Insider in a statement. "Red Dragon missions to Mars will also help inform the overall Mars colonization architecture that SpaceX will reveal later this year."
We haven't heard much about this mission since then, and it's critical, so it'd be an oversight for Musk not to address it. If the company doesn't launch in 2018, it will have to wait until 2020 to do so (when Earth and Mars align for a shorter trip).
Sources: Business Insider, New Scientist
More details about the Red Dragon spacecraft.
SpaceX has released a few videos of important tests performed on the Dragon 2 capsule — the company will upgrade that design into a Red Dragon version of the spacecraft. Musk says it will have the internal volume of a sport utility vehicle, and based on SpaceX's Crew Dragon design, it may have up to seven seats.
The first 2018 mission for Red Dragon will be uncrewed, Musk has intimated, and NASA has expressed interest in helping out.
After tearing through the Martian atmosphere, the Red Dragon needs to fire up its eight SuperDraco engines, which will allow it to stabilize and safely touch down on the planet's surface. Musk has also said the first mission will carry science experiments and rovers.
Still, many details remain. How will the Red Dragon capsule be configured? What exactly does SpaceX plan to deliver to the Martian surface inside of it? How will SpaceX adapt future versions of Red Dragon to carry people?
Sources: Twitter, YouTube, Business Insider, SpaceX (1, 2), NASA, Washington Post
An update on a launchpad fireball that destroyed a Falcon 9 rocket.
Earlier in 2016, Musk and SpaceX said they'd they reveal their Mars colonization plan in September. As fate would have it, however, a launchpad fireball destroyed a Falcon 9 rocket — the company's workhorse — and Facebook's Amos-6 satellite on September 1.
While experts Business Insider spoke with are doubtful SpaceX can return to launching Falcon 9 rockets in November, the company's accident investigators believe they have identified the cause of the blast — so the situation could improve rapidly.
At stake is $10 billion worth of business, over 70 launches of Falcon 9, and a test launch of the Falcon Heavy: the vehicle that will power the 2018 or 2020 mission and beyond. (The first demonstration launch is planned for the "first quarter of 2017.")
It would behoove Musk to update the crowd on this accident, since the company's future rocket will borrow from the design, and delays in the overall launch schedule may also delay SpaceX's Mars plans.
Sources: Business Insider (1, 2, 3), Universe Today, Reuters
See the rest of the story at Business Insider