The First Colonizers of Mars Will Be Robots And Somehow, I Never Saw That Coming

So I always knew that we’d send machines to Mars before us. I mean, we sent the first Mars rover in 1997 (well, that’s when it landed there anyway). I just never imagined the first beings to set foot on Mars wouldn’t have hearts or lungs or minds shaped by anything as tender or trembling as human hope.

But here we are.

In the early 2020s, the idea of colonizing Mars was this really far-off, cinematic-ish dream, something we could imagine but not really achieve in our lifetime. Human breath fogging up a helmet visor beneath an alien sky belongs in movies like The Martian (highly recommend if you haven’t watched it before), not in this life.

I don’t think any of us expected the first true Martian pioneers to be robots.

The other day my dad came to visit and told me about the plan to colonize Mars with robots first. Steady-handed, tireless, solar-fed loyalists built in factories on Earth are going to prepare a silent world for us long before our bodies can even survive there. Of course my father would be the one keeping his keen eye on this kind of thing. He has an adventurous soul trapped inside of a brilliant mind.

This is Elon Musk’s newest plan, and it's already unfolding. Starship, launching in 2026 or 2028 (Earth-to-Mars windows), carrying humanoid robots (the Optimus explorers) on humanity’s first uncrewed mission to Mars.

A ship full of metal bones instead of human ones, the first wave of quiet colonizers, sounds like a myth no one bothered to write yet. And somehow, oddly, it makes as much sense as it stings.

Machines, Not Men (or Women)

SpaceX has been slowly, stubbornly, and painstakingly building the architecture for Mars for nearly two decades now. Starship, the fully reusable rocket tall as a skyscraper is one piece of this. Super Heavy, its booster is another. Orbital refueling, the holy grail of long-range missions has been theorized about for decades. Then there’s the massive payload capacity, that had to be enough to carry habitats, cargo, and yes, our dear old robots.

And now, according to Musk’s May 2025 presentation, Starship’s first Mars-bound payload will be a crew of humanoid robots built by Tesla. Yeah, I’m not kidding.

“Starship will hopefully depart for Mars by the end of 2026, carrying Optimus explorer robots.”
— Elon Musk, 2025

If the 2026 launch window slips (and with spaceflight, it very well might), the next chance is 2028. Mars waits patiently, us…not so much. The thing about flights to Mars is that windows open every 26 months. If you miss it, you’ve got to wait until everything lines up again in harmony.

But no matter the timing, the strategy remains where robots go first and we follow later…depending on how the robots do.

I’ve always imagined astronauts planting flags. I was pretty sure the US would get there first, but Russia and China both had a good shot at it in my mind. But Mars is not the Moon.
Mars is a lot further, for reference, when our orbits line up we’re about 142x father from Mars than the moon and when our orbits are at their farthest we’re over 1,040x farther. The Moon ranges from +127°C to –173°C, while Mars stays between about 0°C and –113°C. While both are extremely cold, Mars is more consistently cold. Settling on Mars would be harsher, and infinitely more demanding.
It requires a lot of groundwork humans couldn’t do without dying in the attempt.

Robots don’t die though, they recharge and wait. Much more patiently than myself. They can also withstand what we can’t while they’re waiting.

If you’ve read my piece about Spending More Than 4 Years on Mars Could Kill Us then you know radiation will kill us. Mars’ atmosphere is so thin it might as well be a balloon. Solar radiation burns through it at alarming rates, but robots don’t get cancer, they just need some firmware patches to protect themselves.

Mars also has dust storms that can swallow entire continents if they were here on Earth. Robots can walk straight through them, not in the least concerned about becoming disoriented and running out of oxygen.

A crew of humans alone on Mars for years is dangerous to their mental health in a way we really couldn’t comprehend at this moment in time. Sometimes when I’m feeling lonely I write a blog post and imagine someone out there needed to read what I wrote. On Mars I’d feel the silence of an empty planet with a heaviness that would absorb through my skin and sink into my marrow.
A crew of robots wouldn’t feel the same.

Just like the deep-sea submersibles, the rovers, the drones that walk before the boots do, these humanoid explorers will become the first hands we extend across the void.

The Optimus Explorers

Tesla’s Optimus were originally designed to fold laundry and carry boxes if you can believe it. They now have a new job though, to become the first Martian settlers.

Equipped with solar charging, the ability to lift heavy things, and possibly self-repair systems, Optimus becomes the backbone of the first Martian outpost.

They won’t be building something glamorous that will stand a millennium, not sculpting domes or raising palaces, but doing the humble work. They’ll scout landing zones, unpack cargo, construct power arrays, laying communication lines, preparing habitats, testing soil, analyzing ice for water extraction, setting up fuel-production modules, and mapping the terrain.

So while we aren’t using these Optimus to fold laundry, they’re still doing the chores of the universe. The groundwork we tend to romanticize a lot less because it don’t fit neatly on a movie poster and the sexiness level is -2.

Arcardia Planitia

If you’re wondering where (like me), it’s likely the landing site for Starship’s robot mission is a place called Arcadia Planitia, a broad mid-latitude plain on Mars filled with subsurface ice.

It’s got water, flat ground, and resources. The trifecta we need when going to find a new home.

Robots will step onto a world that hasn’t hosted walkers in billions of years (don’t come at me conspiracy-theorists!), and crunch into gravity one-third of Earth’s.

Humanity’s first real outpost to other worlds will be set up by beings who feel nothing, but carry our hopes and dreams in their metallic hands.

Somewhere between my lavender peppermint tea and doomscrolling in the middle of the night (yes, I have timers set on all my social apps, which is why I need to scroll at 12:00am when they’re released back to me) I wondered, after years alone on Mars…would the robots even want us to come?

It’s a silly question on its surface, these robots aren’t self-aware in the sci-fi way.
They don’t want anything, they don’t form opinions, feel anything, and they won’t say, “this is our world now, filthy human.”

But I mean it emotionally.

For years, the robots will tend the outpost, maintain solar farms, monitor storms, and run endless cycles of routine and repair. Their data will beam back to Earth across millions of miles and they’ll wait quietly through Martian nights that could swallow sound itself. In their own machine-like way, they’ll become the first residents of the Red Planet.

So when we finally arrive, in our extremely fragile, biological, completely unpredictable forms, will we feel like intruders in the calm little world they’ve maintained? Will the outpost feel like theirs? They’re there to help us survive somewhere we never truly belonged, but thinking about robots colonizing Mars has an emotional weight I didn’t expect.

Starship’s Plan

The idea is for Starship to launch empty, refuel in orbit from a tanker ship, then burn toward Mars. This is the game-changing architecture SpaceX is still testing, it hasn’t been fully successful yet, but the theory is sound.

Remember those huge variances in distances I listed earlier about the difference of Earth to the moon versus Mars? Yeah, every 26 months, Earth and Mars align and we want to be headed there when distance is shortest.
Launching at any other time wastes energy and resources, so timing is everything.

Even at those “short” distances, we’re looking at 6–9 months of travel time (I don’t know why I kept writing time-travel there, but this isn’t one of my time pieces). Starship will drift through interplanetary space for months with nothing but the sun and cosmic radiation as companions.

Robots won’t complain though, I definitely would.

Landing a giant spacecraft on Mars is a nightmare in case you never thought about it.
Thin atmosphere means parachutes don’t work well and heavy payloads fall fast. You know what’s heavy? Spaceships.
Starship will do a retropropulsive landing, firing engines downward to slow itself before the surface impact.

For decades, Mars colonization felt like a “later” thing, but finally, we have a real plan to make it happen (thank Elon).

Robots are truth-tellers in exploration, they reveal whether something is actually possible without sacrificing lives in the process. By surviving on Mars first, they tell us we can survive there too.

They make it feel almost inevitable.

Robots won’t own Mars, and they won’t dream beneath its two moons when they settle down for the night. They’ll help shape it into something survivable though. Humanity has always had tools, it’s what made us such a unique species on this watery planet we call home. We’ve always built our worlds together with things that make us stronger, and this is just a new kind of tool.

When we finally do arrive on Mars, it’ll be a moment unlike anything in history.

A human boot, pressing into dust untouched by life for billions of years, but landing on a world that’s already been shaped, tested, and made ready by the steady work of machines.

I feel gratitude for the robots that will start the colony, and when we arrive, we’ll make it a home.

The First Colonizers of Mars Will Be Robots And Somehow, I Never Saw That Coming

Machines, Not Men (or Women)

The Optimus Explorers

Arcardia Planitia

Starship’s Plan

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