Mars: New Plan to Launch Humans to the Red Planet

There's a new plan for sending humans to Mars. Researchers have created a U.S. strategy that minimizes new developments and relies mainly on already available or planned NASA assets.

This latest plan relies on a long-term, stepwise series of missions to Mars that would begin with a crew landing on Mars's moon, Phobos, in 2033. This would be followed by a short-stay mission in 2039 and a year-long landing in 2043.

Other plans to Mars are expected to be costly, and rarely stay within budget. Yet this latest plan actually could be achieved with projected NASA budgets due to the fact that it relies on existing or planned technologies rather than new innovations.

Over the past five to ten years, there have been a series of innovations that make travel to Mars a possibility. For example, the so-called Space Launch System, a Saturn V equivalent and the new Orion crew capsule are under development by NASA. In addition, NASA is posed to save money as they transfer low-Earth-orbit cargo and crew services to the private sector via fixed-price contracts.

"With all of these previous technical and fiscal issues addressed, we can again believe that the dream of sending people to Mars is alive," said Scott Hubbard of Stanford University in a news release. "The next step is to build a broad consensus around the goal and strategy for a long term, humans to Mars program."

With that said, it remains to be seen whether officials will follow through with this plan. What it does show, though, is that sending humans to Mars may just be possible in the near future.

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