NASA Human Spaceflight Will Require Strategic Plan After Newly Introduced Legislation

A newly introduced legislation will require the American space agency, NASA, to create a detailed analysis about how it would go about achieving the long-term goal of human missions to Mars. The Mapping a New and Innovative Focus on our Exploration Strategy (MANIFEST) for Human Spaceflight Act was introduced on Jan. 24 by Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).

"By requiring a strategic plan from NASA, this bill will help focus existing resources towards achieving our long-term goal of landing a human on Mars," John Cornyn said, according to KTSA. A varied range of issues will be covered by the report envisioned by the bill, including studies of crew health and safety, partnerships with private industry or other countries, use of the International Space Station (ISS) to achieve exploration goals, descriptions and assessments of mission architectures using the Space Launch System and Orion.

Incidentally, the bill does not directly mention what should be the intermediate missions before going to the Red Planet, or talk about manned missions to the lunar surface. However, it requires the report to analyze such destinations.

According to a Space.com report, the bill stipulates one of the features of the report to be an examination of the "utility of an expanded human presence in cis-lunar space toward enabling missions to various lunar orbits, the lunar surface, asteroids, Mars, the moons of Red Planet, and other destinations of interest."

Additionally, the bill also mandates the report to provide a detailed plan to prioritize and phase the intermediate destinations. With the bill in effect as law, NASA has to submit an interim report to the National Academies 90 days after its enactment, subsequently, the National Academies' final version of the report is due a year after the bill becomes law. The bill specifies that the process has to be repeated every five years.