List of crewed Mars mission plans

It is limited to studies done with engineering and scientific knowledge about the capabilities of then current technology, typically for high-budget space agencies like NASA.

In addition, the lowest available transfer energy varies on a roughly 26 month cycle, with a minimum in the 1969 and 1971 launch windows, rising to a peak in the late 1970s, and hitting another low in 1986 and 1988.

The new data meant redesigns for planned Martian landers, and showed life would have a more difficult time surviving there than previously anticipated.

[82] Willy Ley popularized a similar mission in English in the book The Conquest of Space (1949), featuring illustrations by Chesley Bonestell.

(Winged landing was considered possible because at the time of his proposal, the Martian atmosphere was believed to be much denser than was later found to be the case.)

[84] Later versions of the mission proposal, featured in the Disney "Man In Space" film series,[85] showed nuclear-powered ion-propulsion vehicles for the interplanetary cruise.

Orion was intended to have the ability to transport extremely large payloads compared to chemical rocketry, making crewed missions to Mars and the outer planets feasible.

[86] In 1962, Aeronutronic Ford,[87] General Dynamics and the Lockheed Missiles and Space Company made studies of Mars mission designs as part of NASA Marshall Spaceflight Center's "Project EMPIRE".

[88] Von Braun's proposal used Saturn V boosters to launch NERVA-powered upper stages that would propel two six-crew spacecraft on a dual mission in the early 1980s.

In 1975, von Braun discussed the mission architecture that emerged from these Apollo-era studies in a recorded lecture, and while doing so suggested that multiple shuttle launches could instead be configured to lift the two nuclear thermal rocket engine-equipped spacecraft in smaller parts, for assembly in orbit.

[89] The Martian Piloted Complex (MPK) was a proposal by Mikhail Tikhonravov of the Soviet Union for a crewed Mars expedition, using the (then-proposed) N1 rocket, in studies from 1956 to 1962.

The TMK spacecraft was due to launch in 1971 and make a 3-year-long flight including a Mars fly-by, at which time probes would have been dropped.

In response to a presidential initiative, NASA made a study of a project for human lunar- and Mars exploration as a proposed follow-on to the International Space Station.

This report was widely criticized as too elaborate and expensive, and all funding for human exploration beyond Earth orbit was canceled by Congress.

A 1990 paper by Robert Zubrin and David A. Baker, then of Martin Marietta, proposed reducing the mission mass (and hence the cost) by using in situ resource utilization to manufacture propellant from the Martian atmosphere.

[103] The project's proposed timeline would begin with robotic exploration, a proof of concept simulation of sustaining humans on Mars, and eventually a crewed mission.

Objections from the participating nations of ESA and other delays have put the timeline into question, and currently ExoMars, delivered an orbiter to Mars in 2016, have come to fruition.

Another proposal for a joint ESA mission with Russia is based on two spacecraft being sent to Mars, one carrying a six-person crew and the other the expedition's supplies.

In 2006, former NASA engineer James C. McLane III proposed a scheme to initially colonize Mars via a one-way trip by only one human.

[117] NASA released initial details of the latest version conceptual level human Mars exploration architecture in this presentation.

This proposal was mostly supported by Congress, which approved cancelling Project Constellation in favor of a 2025 Asteroid Redirect Mission and orbiting Mars in the 2030s.

[124][125] In 2012, a conceptual architecture was published by Boeing, United Launch Alliance, and RAL Space in Britain, laying out a possible design for a crewed Mars mission.

Financing was intended to come from selling the broadcasting rights of the entire training and of the flight as a reality television show, and that money would be used to contract for all hardware and launch services.

On December 2, 2014, NASA's Advanced Human Exploration Systems and Operations Mission Director Jason Crusan and Deputy Associate Administrator for Programs James Reuthner announced tentative support for the Boeing "Affordable Mars Mission Design"[clarification needed] including radiation shielding, centrifugal artificial gravity, in-transit consumable resupply, and a lander which can return.

[citation needed][137] The second stage, "Proving Ground", moves away from Earth reliance and ventures into cislunar space for most of its tasks.

The proposed Lunar Gateway would test deep-space habitation facilities, and validate capabilities required for human exploration of Mars.

[140] In March 2019, Vice President Mike Pence declared, "American astronauts will walk on the Moon again before the end of 2024, 'by any means necessary'.

As discussed in 2016, the ITS launch vehicle conceptual design was to be a large reusable booster topped by a spaceship or a tanker for in-orbit refueling.

The vehicle concept, developed by Lockheed Martin,[151] would use both future and heritage technology, as well as the Orion spacecraft built by NASA.

[156] As of April 2018, the DST is still a concept to be studied, and NASA has not officially proposed the project in an annual U.S. federal government budget cycle.