Moon to Mars Exploration Blueprint Details Released
In a document published Wednesday, NASA has released details of its blueprint for Moon to Mars Exploration. The document explains its methodology behind developing NASA’s Moon to Mars Objectives that drive its architecture, plans, and efforts to enable long-term human presence and exploration throughout the solar system.
"This great endeavor requires a strategy that is technically and financially resilient and that reflects a unity and constancy of purpose across the Agency."
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
NASA’s Moon to Mars Strategy and Objectives Development provides insight into how NASA developed and refined its Moon to Mars Objectives released in 2022, and describes how the agency is establishing an objectives-driven architectural review process to ensure efforts to develop, build, and achieve exploration activities at the Moon and Mars are resilient for decades to come.
NASA’s overall blueprint for Moon to Mars exploration seeks to develop a roadmap with input from a wide variety of U.S. and global stakeholders to define overarching exploration goals to enable the agency and others to build capabilities to meet those goals, a shift from a capabilities-driven approach to exploration.
Blueprint for Moon to Mars Exploration Intended to Inspire
"We return to the Moon to stay. To learn and to live and to create. To do incredible science we can do nowhere else. To continue to build our Nation’s capabilities in space, creating positive effects on our economy, our security, and our daily lives. And we go to inspire the Artemis Generation to extend human presence and exploration throughout the solar system – and beyond," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson in the foreword to the document.
"This great endeavor requires a strategy that is technically and financially resilient and that reflects a unity and constancy of purpose across the Agency. Our strategy will reflect our Nation’s leadership and values in science and exploration and harness our ability to inspire. We will go together with our international partners and industry enablers."
Under Artemis, NASA has set a vision to explore more of the Moon than ever before. With the crew for Artemis II recently named, the agency plans to return humans to the Moon and establish a cadence of missions including at the lunar south polar region. These missions set up a long-term presence to inform future exploration of farther destinations, including Mars, and other potential future destinations in the solar system.
(Source: NASA news release. Images provided and from file)