[JshWright]

No, but the cool thing is, SpaceX is using their first stage landings to do research that will advance their goals on Mars.

In order to land large payloads on Mars, SpaceX is going to have to do something that, up until recently, has never been done before. They're going to have to fire a rocket engine 'backwards' in an atmosphere (albeit a thin one) while travelling at supersonic speeds. This will be necessary in order to slow down enough to actually land (parachutes don't buy you much on Mars).

This 'supersonic retropropulsion' is something that has been modeled a lot, but is really hard to actually test. You would need to get a rocket up to supersonic speeds, in the thin upper stages of Earth's atmosphere (where the conditions are close to that of Mars) and have it fire its engines backwards. As luck would have it, that's exactly what the Falcon 9 first stage does during its reentry burn. The data they are collecting now will be invaluable in designing their Mars bound spacecraft.

NASA is also very interested in this data: https://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/october/new-commercial-rocke...