The next stop for SpaceX: the Red Planet.

Founder and CEO Elon Musk announced Wednesday via Twitter that he intends to send a Dragon capsule to land on Mars as early as 2018. If successful, it would be a big first step toward his ultimate goal of colonizing the planet.

Musk also said the capsule will be called the Red Dragon, a nod to the planet's red surface. The first test flight will be unmanned; Musk also said he wouldn't recommend sending crews to a destination beyond the moon in Dragons since they're only about the size of an SUV.

"Wouldn't be fun for longer journeys," Musk explained in a tweet.

(MORE: Hubble Telescope Finds Tiny Moon Orbiting Dwarf Planet)

California-based SpaceX already is using Dragons for space station supply runs, and the company could start flying Americans to the International Space Station by the end of next year.

Musk said the upgraded Dragon is designed to land anywhere in the solar system. The propulsive landing system was tested recently at the SpaceX plant in McGregor, Texas.

Red Dragon would be launched aboard a mightier version of the current SpaceX Falcon rocket that may make its debut at Florida's Kennedy Space Center by year's end.

This artist rendering provided by SpaceX shows a Dragon capsule sitting on the surface of Mars.

(SpaceX via AP)

Additional details on his overall Mars plan will come, Musk promised. After successfully landing a leftover Falcon booster at sea earlier this month, he said he would elaborate on his approach to establishing a city on Mars at an aerospace meeting in Mexico in September.

"I think it's going to sound pretty crazy. So it should be at least entertaining," he told reporters.

Musk maintains that reusing rockets is key to reducing launch costs and, consequently, opening up space. SpaceX now has managed to land a first-stage booster on land, as well as on an ocean platform. The recently retrieved booster could fly again on another satellite mission this summer.

NASA, meanwhile, has its own Mars exploration program, intended to send astronauts there in the 2030s. The space agency contracted out station deliveries in the post-shuttle era in order to focus on that long-term goal.

Shortly after the SpaceX announcement, NASA's deputy administrator, Dava Newman, said the space agency will offer technical support to Musk's company in exchange for Red Dragon descent and landing data from Mars. No money will be exchanged, she stressed.

"Sending astronauts to Mars, which will be one of the greatest feats of human innovation in the history of civilization, carries with it many, many puzzles to piece together," Newman wrote in a blog. "That's why we at NASA have made it a priority to reach out to partners in boardrooms, classrooms, laboratories, space agencies and even garages across our country and around the world."

The window to embark on a Mars mission — whether robotic or human — comes up only every two years because of planetary alignment.

MORE ON WEATHER.COM: The Red Planet

The Red Planet

This image released Aug. 27, 2003 captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows a close-up of Mars when the telescope was 34,648,840 miles away. The picture, assembled from a series of exposures, was taken just 11 hours before the planet made its closest approach to Earth in 60,000 years.