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On the technical front, Musk has already introduced the world to the Raptor rocket engine he plans to use to take people to Mars, which is different that the engines used for the Falcon rockets that SpaceX has already sent on missions. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's heavy-lift Space Launch System rocket, expected to cost $7 billion through its first test flight, is currently slated for launch in 2018. Earlier this year he announced that SpaceX intends to send an unmanned mission to Mars by 2018, to investigate the demands of a later crewed mission. In December 2010, SpaceX became the first private company to send a spacecraft into low-Earth orbit and back, and a year and a half later it became the first to dock at the International Space Station. The SpaceX CEO laid out his plan to colonize the Red Planet at the International Astronautical Congress, a meeting of multiple international space exploration associations in Guadalajara, Mexico.
SpaceX successfully tests its most powerful rocket to date. The company's goal will be to use the Raptor (rocket engine) to power their "super-heavy" Interplanetary Transport System in facilitation of the colonization of Mars and beyond.