NASA’s Mars Journey: Next Steps For Mankind

With film audiences traveling to Mars in their imaginations through The Martian, a fictional account of a future mission to fourth planet, NASA is preparing to actually make that trip.

“John is an accomplished manager, and I’m pleased he is assuming this new leadership role in the development of SLS as we continue taking great steps forward in the continuous human exploration of space and on our journey to Mars”, said William Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate. It will require NASA to work with private sector and worldwide partners, including the 12 other space agencies seeking to expand humanity’s reach in space.

NASA aims to gain deep-space experience near the moon on a series of missions over the next decade or so. It’s where we are now, using the global Space Station for experiments to help us understand how to maintain human health in space and to develop the necessary technology to travel and thrive in hostile environments. The report is presented as a strategy that “charts a course toward horizon goals while delivering near-term benefits and defining a resilient architecture that can accommodate budgetary changes, political priorities, new scientific discoveries, technological breakthroughs and evolving partnerships”.

Sending astronauts to Mars is the third stage of the plan.

Data sent back to earth by the Mars rover Curiosity provided strong hints that water used to be abundant on the Red Planet’s surface, creating rivers, lakes, and deltas. India and Europe also control active Mars orbiters, called Mangalyaan and Mars Express, respectively. But if it’s something more catastrophic, like a nearby star exploding, we may all get vaporized. NASA plans to launch a lander called InSight next year to probe the Red Planet’s interior and a highly capable rover in 2020.

Then there are a few major possibilities: Earth heats up so badly that it will enter a massive ice age, thus everything will go extinct, humans included; we destroy our ozone lair completely and we get roasted alive, or we will simply die one by one while Earth tries to reform itself. It will also carry a technology-demonstrating instrument that generates oxygen from Mars’ atmospheric carbon dioxide.

NASA is still working out the details about the journey to Mars. But putting boots on the Red Planet’s surface, and setting up a permanent outpost, remain the ultimate goals.

With the Space Launch Program, Orion crewed spacecraft, and revitalized space launch complex, we are developing core transportation capabilities for the journey to Mars and making sure continued access for our industrial crew and cargo partners to preserve operations and stimulate new financial activity in low-Earth orbit. It looks like NASA is planning the next trip to Mars and this time they come up with an even more ambitious plan.

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