Laying the groundwork for the first human mission to Mars

Sending humans to Mars and returning them safely to Earth would be one of the most complex endeavors that humans have ever carried out. The number of issues that must be dealt with simultaneously is inordinately large, and all must be resolved in order to have a successful mission. NASA has a lot of experience with human missions in low Earth orbit and some to the moon. The Artemis missions will give us more (and current) experience at the moon. And we’ve sent spacecraft to all the planets in our solar system. But we’re not yet ready to send people to Mars. Developing a Mars mission is not just about designing and building a spacecraft that can get there, land and get back. A successful mission must also be able to carry out science activities at Mars while also understanding, tracking and ensuring human health and performance issues so that astronauts can do what we’re asking of them and do it safely. Meanwhile, a successful mission must address planetary protection issues so that, if there is indigenous life on Mars, we don’t risk contaminating Mars or, on return, contaminating Earth. These very different components must be developed together and integrated from the very beginning into a single mission concept and plan, before some designs have already been fixed. Aspects that must be considered include: - Engineering. Mars introduces operational considerations that have no precedent, including a multi-year mission duration with the very different mission phases of launch, multi-month cruise to Mars with no ability to return rapidly to Earth, landing and launching multi-metric-ton payloads through a thin atmosphere, and surface operations and launch of astronauts to space without real-time support from mission control. - Human health and performance. Crew capabilities and limitations directly shape mission architecture. Degradation and recovery across physical, cognitive and psychological domains must be understood explicitly over the full mission timeline, as we cannot assume human crews will always operate at peak performance or any other steady state. - Science. A human mission must enable scientific return beyond what is achievable robotically. Astronaut science activities include traverses potentially over tens of kilometers, real-time geologic interpretation, intelligent sample collection and preliminary analysis of samples inside of a habitat. High-level science goals demand integration with operational realities, crew capability and planetary protection constraints. - Planetary protection. Plans for forward contamination of Mars and back contamination risks to Earth when humans are involved must be developed early in the architecture development, rather than attempting to manage them during late-stage procedure development when hardware might already be designed or manufactured and be unchangeable. We recently convened the “Achieving Mars XII” workshop (sponsored by Explore Mars, Inc.) on this topic to discuss for the first time how to…