At the Grok 3 launch event Elon Musk said that "if all goes well SpaceX will send Starship rockets to Mars with Optimus robots and Grok" in the next transit window, which will be in late 2026.
Grok 3 is the latest release of the artificial intelligence (AI) model Grok, developed by Musk's company xAI.
Musk hasn't said more, but the idea seems to be installing a scaled down version of Grok 3 on Mars to control mobile Optimus robots.
"Grok will be the first intelligent being on Mars, embodied through Optimus robots," Beff Jezos (the profet of Effective Accelarationism) posted to X.
Elon Musk had previously outlined ambitious plans for SpaceX to launch uncrewed Starship missions to Mars in 2026. The first launches could happen in the next Earth-Mars transfer window, which occurs approximately every 26 months.
"The first Starships to Mars will launch in 2 years when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens," Musk posted to X in September. "These will be uncrewed to test the reliability of landing intact on Mars. If those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years."
Operational and technical challenges
Starship is large enough to carry a large GPU array of hundreds or thousands of units as part of its cargo for AI-driven tasks like processing data from robots. But Musk's companies should address practical constraints like power, cooling, and radiation protection to ensure functionality on Mars.
Installing a scaled-down version of Grok 3 on Mars would require advances. Musk's companies would have to develop a compact, energy-efficient version of Grok 3, optimized for low power consumption and radiation resistance. This could involve creating lightweight computing units with sufficient processing power to handle natural language processing and decision-making tasks. On Mars, the system would need solar panels or a small nuclear power source for energy, along with robust communication hardware to relay data back to Earth.