NASA and industry experts convened the "Achieving Mars XII" workshop to identify how engineering, human health, science, and planetary protection must be integrated from the start of Mars mission planning. The workshop, sponsored by Explore Mars Inc. and involving representatives from NASA, industry, and academia, created two mission scenarios -- one focused on subsurface ice resources and another on science objectives -- to stress-test how these four disciplines interact. The findings underscore that human Mars exploration requires coordinated development across all components from day one, not sequential problem-solving.
The workshop identified several fundamental challenges requiring cross-discipline collaboration. Planning must account for multi-year mission duration, months-long cruise with no rapid return option, landing heavy payloads through thin atmosphere, surface operations without real-time mission control support, and crew performance degradation across physical, cognitive, and psychological domains. Science activities must leverage human capabilities like long-distance traverses and real-time geologic interpretation beyond what robotic missions can achieve, while planetary protection protocols must be designed early to avoid hardware becoming unchangeable during late-stage development.
The authors recommend NASA commission a standing community group to hold quarterly or semi-annual follow-on workshops, develop Mars human mission architecture now to identify long lead-time technology needs, and fly a high-resolution imager to Mars for landing site analysis since the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE instrument has degraded beyond its design life. NASA should also coordinate early with all four disciplinary communities and identify activities during Artemis lunar missions that feed forward to Mars mission requirements.
The authors stress these recommendations sit on the critical path for developing integrated mission concepts and architecture designs. Without implementing them now, even at low effort levels, human Mars missions will remain perpetually distant rather than moving toward concrete timelines and site-specific plans.