Our Strategy for the Journey to Mars
NASA’s strategy, aligned with the pioneering
principles, connects near-term activities and
capability development to the journey to Mars
and a future with a sustainable human presence in
deep space. This strategy strikes a balance between
progress toward horizon goals, near-term benefits,
and long-term flexibility to budgetary changes,
political priorities, new scientific discoveries,
technological breakthroughs, and evolving
partnerships. The journey to Mars reflects an
integrated NASA effort, in collaboration with
our partners, to advance from today’s Earth
Reliant human spaceflight program through the
Proving Ground of cislunar space to an Earth
Independent, deep-space capability.
This strategy is a natural evolution of prior
decades of space exploration. The era of
The ISS, with flags of the partner nations.
modern space exploration began with remote
observations through early telescopes, providing
the knowledge necessary to design and send
What is Pioneering?
robotic missions to Earth orbit, planets, moons,
Pioneering space requires a sustained set of mutually
comets, and asteroids. NASA’s human spaceflight
reinforcing activities—science missions, technology
program has already demonstrated the capability
development, capability demonstrations, and human
for Earth Reliant human exploration, culminating
spaceflight—to expand human presence into deep space
today with the ISS, where astronauts and supplies
and extend our robotic agents farther into the solar system,
are ferried between the station and Earth within
with the horizon goal of humans travelling to Mars and
hours. Our partners on the ISS, which now
remaining on the surface.
include commercial spaceflight ventures, reflect
a blossoming worldwide human spaceflight
capability for low Earth orbit (LEO). Meanwhile, robotic science missions
are scouting resources and characterizing potential destinations for human
explorers at far more distant locations within our solar system.
The Path Forward
NASA and our partners are already at Mars, operating with highly effective
robotic emissaries in orbit and on the surface. NASA has exploited nearly
every opportunity over the past two decades (occurring every 26 months
when transit between Earth and Mars is the most efficient) to send orbiters,
landers, and rovers to the Red Planet with increasingly complex experiments
and sensing systems. Mars orbiters have mapped with high precision the
topography of the planet, begun mapping the distribution of water ice below
the surface, imaged geologically ancient river deltas, and discovered likely
seasonal outflows of salty liquid water in the present. They have mapped
detailed mineral composition in select areas and located suitable landing
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