Elon Musk’s SpaceX will be landing its Starship rockets on Mars well before 2030, the billionaire entrepreneur said in a tweet on Tuesday.
Musk’s SpaceX raised about $850 million in equity financing, the private rocket launch service said in a regulatory filing in February.
The private space company had raised $1.9 billion in August in its largest single fundraising round, according to financial software and data provider PitchBook.
The latest round reportedly lifted the valuation of the company whose investors include Alphabet Inc and Fidelity Investments to about $74 billion.
Earlier this month, a prototype of SpaceX’s Starship rocket exploded during a landing attempt after a high-altitude test launch.
The SN9 prototype was a test model of the heavy-lift rocket being developed by the company to carry humans and 100 tons of cargo on future missions to the moon and Mars.
The third time appeared to be the charm for Musk’s Starship rocket – until it wasn’t.
The heavy-duty launch vehicle prototype from SpaceX soared flawlessly into the sky in a high-altitude test blast-off from Boca Chica, Texas, earlier this month, then flew itself back to Earth to achieve the first upright landing for a Starship model.
But the triumph was short-lived. Listing slightly to one side as an automated fire-suppression system trained a stream of water on flames still burning at the base of the rocket, the spacecraft blew itself to pieces about eight minutes after touchdown.
