Lockheed Unveils Plans for Orbiting Mars Base Camp and Lander Within 10 Years

Speaking at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Adelaide, Australia, officials with Lockheed Martin today revealed their vision for what they believe is a sound, safe and compelling mission architecture to help NASA get humans to Mars within a decade, using a concept centered around an orbiting outpost they call the Mars Base Camp.

“Sending humans to Mars has always been a part of science fiction, but today we have the capability to make it a reality,” said Lisa Callahan, vice president and general manager of Commercial Civil Space at Lockheed Martin. “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.”

Plans for building the outpost align with NASA’s Space Launch System SLS rocket, Orion spacecraft and the agency’s plans for a Deep Space Gateway orbiting the moon, which will serve as a critical staging point for missions to the lunar surface and deeper into space, such as to asteroids and Mars in the 2030s.

The first launch of an SLS and Orion, Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1), which will be a shakedown flight to the moon and back of the integrated SLS/Orion system, won’t launch until 2019, with the first crewed Orion mission to lunar orbit occurring around 2-3 years later.

Such a lunar outpost will offer a true deep space environment for astronauts to gain experience and have opportunity to build and test the systems needed for the very challenging missions that will follow, but will also offer the ability for crews to return to Earth if needed in days – rather than weeks or months on missions further into space (such as Mars).

Lockheed is already developing a prototype habitat for the gateway under a contract with NASA, taking the old Donatello Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM) once used in the payload bay of the space shuttles to transfer cargo to the ISS, and refurbishing it to prototype their deep space habitat in the Space Station Processing Facility at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

And although some components of the Mars Base Camp’s architecture will be pre-positioned in Mars orbit ahead of time, the Mars Base Camp would ultimately be built up at the Deep Space Gateway, away from Earth’s gravity, before being deployed to the Red Planet.

An Orion spacecraft would serve as the heart of the outpost, same as the Deep Space Gateway.

In addition to an orbiting base camp, Lockheed also envisions a reusable, single-stage lander for the outpost called a Mars Accent Descent Vehicle (MADV), using Orion avionics and systems as its command deck and powered by engines using liquid-hydrogen/liquid-oxygen propellant, both of which will be generated from water.

The lander would be capable of conducting surface mission as long as two weeks in length, with up to four astronauts, before returning to the orbiting outpost where it would be refueled and readied for another mission.

Some more images of the Mars Base Camp concept from Lockheed below.

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