Elon Musk is taking the long view. The billionaire SpaceX founder has long said that humanity needs to expand its footprint out into the solar system — specifically to Mars, which is the most suitable and reachable target — so that we won't go extinct if something bad should happen to Earth.

SpaceX owner Elon Musk detailed his push to make the human race mutli-planetary is to provide it insurance, specifically to save it from being “incinerated” by the sun. The world’s richest man explained that his ambitions to travel to Mars are meant to “better understand the nature of the universe,

The White House hinted that Mars missions would be a priority of the Trump Administration last month after the president met with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, indicating in a press release after the two met that the US and Italy would partner on a Mars mission as soon as next year.