NASA Mission to Mars News: Mars Base Camp Unveiled
New details about aerospace company Lockheed Martin's Mars Base Camp were revealed at the International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide, Australia, a few days ago. The camp is crucial in NASA's vision to bring humans to the Red Planet in a decade.
Unveiled by Lockheed Martin on Sept. 28, the plan for the said camp revealed its exciting design, which included a reusable surface lander that was called the Mars Ascent/Descent Vehicle. According to the company, the Mars Base Camp plan looks to build a crewed space station orbiting around Mars to help future explorations by astronauts.
According to the aerospace company, the MADV would be affixed to the space station, journeying to the surface of Mars and back through supersonic retropropulsion, where rocket engines are employed to reduce the speed of the lander during its descent.
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According to Lockheed Martin's Vice President and General Manager for Commercial Civil Space Lisa Callahan, the Mars Base Camp will finally make it possible to send humans to Mars.
"Partnered with NASA, our vision leverages hardware currently in development and production. We're proud to have Orion powered-on and completing testing in preparation for its Exploration Mission-1 flight and eventually its journey to Mars," said Callahan.
Lockheed Martin's Mars Base Camp runs in line with NASA's lunar Deep Space Gateway approach, which will enable astronauts to reside and work in orbit around the Moon for months at a time and perform extended operations even when this far from Earth. In this Gateway, people will be able to work on lunar science while also testing systems and operations such as habitats and airlocks. This is where the Mars Base Camp will be situated before it gets deployed to Mars. Lockheed Martin also revealed that the first crewed missions to the surface of Mars would be relatively short in duration and science-focused.
