Pioneering Space Through the Evolvable Mars Campaign

Abstract

NASA’s Pioneering Space Strategy aims to expand human and robotic presence further into the solar system, not just to explore and visit, but to stay. NASA’s strategy is designed to meet technical and nontechnical challenges, leverage current and near-term activities, and lead to a future where humans can work, learn, operate, and thrive safely in space for an extended, and eventually indefinite, period of time. Enabled by this strategy and collaboration with stakeholders and partners, both commercial, international, and academic, NASA will develop the capabilities necessary to send humans to Mars. To identify potential options to enable pioneering of the solar system, NASA is advancing its study of an Evolvable Mars Campaign looking at pioneering options of sustainable sequences of activities including science missions, technology development, and capability demonstrations to expand human presence across multiple solar system destinations. This paper provides an overview of NASA’s Pioneering Strategy options explored by the Evolvable Mars Campaign and expands on the concept of pioneering as a natural continuation of prior exploration efforts. The paper re-introduces the exploration thresholds of Earth-reliant, the Proving Ground, and Earth-independent; and discusses challenges faced at each. It provides detail on near-term activities, in the Proving Ground of cislunar space and beneficial parallel science missions, which will retire risk and pave the way for deep space human missions that will send humans farther into the solar system than ever before.