Architectures of Exploration
How humans will live and work beyond Earth — the Moon-to-Mars architecture, the Mars surface base, the deep-space transit habitat, surface power and mobility, construction from local resources, deep-space propulsion, and landing on Mars.
- Crewed Deep-Space PropulsionExploration architecture
Getting a crew to Mars quickly enough to limit their exposure to weightlessness and radiation. Chemical rockets are proven but heavy on propellant; nuclear-thermal and nuclear-electric propulsion promise shorter transits, while solar-electric tugs can pre-position cargo ahead of the crew.
- Mars Entry, Descent & LandingExploration architecture
The problem of setting a heavy crewed vehicle down safely on Mars. The atmosphere is thick enough to fiercely heat an incoming craft yet too thin to slow a massive lander by parachute alone, so landing humans will demand a combination of heat shields, retropropulsion, and technologies well beyond those that delivered the robotic rovers.
- Planetary Surface MobilityExploration architecture
How crews range across a world beyond the walking distance of their habitat — from unpressurised buggies for short trips to pressurised rovers that serve as mobile homes for days-long expeditions. Mobility multiplies the science a surface mission can do, turning a single landing site into a region to explore.
- Space Construction for HabitatsExploration architecture
Building shelter on another world rather than carrying it there. Concepts range from covering habitats with bagged regolith for radiation shielding to three-dimensional printing of structures from local soil, so that the mass launched from Earth shrinks and the base can grow using what is already on the ground.
- Surface Power SystemsExploration architecture
The electricity that keeps a surface base alive — running life support, recharging rovers, and driving the machines that extract local resources. Solar arrays serve where the Sun shines, but through the long lunar night and the dust of a Martian winter a compact fission reactor offers steady power independent of sunlight.
- The Deep-Space Transit HabitatExploration architecture
The spacecraft in which a crew lives during the months-long cruise between worlds. Cut off from resupply and beyond the protection of Earth's magnetic field, a transit habitat must recycle nearly all its air and water, shield its crew from radiation, and keep them healthy and sane across interplanetary distances.
- The Mars Surface BaseExploration architecture
A crewed outpost on Mars, the long-term goal of human deep-space exploration. Separated from Earth by months of travel and up to twenty minutes of communication delay, a Mars base must make its own propellant, water, and oxygen from local resources and sustain its crew with little hope of rescue.
- The Moon-to-Mars ArchitectureExploration architecture
The strategy of returning to the Moon first, and using it as a proving ground for the systems and skills needed to send crews to Mars. Under this integrated approach the Artemis missions and the Lunar Gateway are steps toward a longer campaign, testing habitats, life support, and surface operations close to home before the far harder journey to Mars.