NASA released a revised version of its Moon to Mars objectives Tuesday, forming a blueprint for shaping exploration throughout the solar system. These guideposts in the agency’s Moon to Mars exploration approach will help shape NASA’s investments, as well as those of the agency’s industry and international partners, toward the Moon and beyond.
Starting with 50 draft objectives developed by agency leaders across our
mission directorates earlier this year, NASA invited its workforce, the public,
industry, and the agency’s international partners to provide feedback, and followed up with two workshops with industry and international
partners to engage in further discussions.
The resulting revised 63 final objectives reflect a matured strategy for
NASA and its partners to develop a blueprint for sustained human presence and
exploration throughout the solar system. They cover four broad areas: science;
transportation and habitation; lunar and Martian infrastructure; and
operations. The agency also added a set of recurring tenets to address common
themes across objectives.
“We need a roadmap with staying power, and through a collaborative process,
we’ve identified a core set of defined objectives to achieve our exploration
goals with our partners,” said NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy. “These
objectives are both practical and aspirational, and we were gratified by the
thoughtful contributions of our workforce, industry, and international partners
who will join us in shaping our future together.”
Under Artemis, NASA has set a vision to explore more of the Moon than ever before. With
its Artemis I mission now on the launchpad, 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.
In November 2021, NASA senior leaders began working on the objectives in
coordination with an Agency Cross-Directorate Federated Board, whose purpose is
to ensure NASA’s focus is integrated with common strategic goals and direction
across the agency’s mission directorates. The objectives enable NASA to explore
synergies between the United States and other nations’ objectives for lunar and
Martian exploration, including potential opportunities for collaboration.
The draft, high-level objectives were released to the public and the NASA
workforce in May 2022 with a request for comments by June. NASA received more
than 5,000 inputs and as a result, many of the ideas were modified and some new
objectives were added. NASA held consultation workshops with both industry and
international partners to help refine and discuss the objectives and identify
any gaps.
“We’re helping to steward humanity’s global movement to deep space,” said
Jim Free, NASA’s associate administrator for the Exploration Systems
Development Mission Directorate, which managed the objectives team, and is
ultimately responsible for the agency’s Moon to Mars architecture. “The
objectives will help ensure a long-term strategy for solar system exploration
can retain constancy of purpose and weather political and funding changes. They
help provide clear direction as new technologies, vehicles, and elements are
developed in the coming years and are designed to be realistically achievable.”
The Artemis campaign represents the capabilities and operations needed to
safely conduct deep space science and exploration missions at the Moon and is
tightly coupled with Mars mission planning. Science is a top priority of the
Artemis missions along with key exploration technology objectives.
Following a successful Artemis I launch later this month, NASA plans to
send the first humans back to orbit the Moon with Artemis II no earlier than
2024, and to the lunar surface no earlier than 2025 on the Artemis III mission.
NASA will use elements of Artemis to test systems and concepts for the journey
to and from Mars. The follow-on Mars campaign will remain connected to the
agency’s sustained presence on the lunar surface by using the Moon as a
testbed.
Kurt Vogel, director of space architectures in the office of the NASA Administrator said, “We wanted to shape objectives to guide the upcoming missions, as opposed to previous approaches, which consisted of building elements and capabilities first to support the campaign. The community provided enormously helpful inputs, and we’re ready to move toward the next steps in architecture planning.”
The final framework objectives are available online at: https://go.nasa.gov/3BUkHGL
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