The NASA Aerospace Advisory Panel has described current plans for a manned mission to Mars as “fragile”, and has called for the establishment of a “Marz Czar” or a specialist mission office that would ensure the agency was adequately prepared to complete the unprecedented mission.

The calls were part its 2016 annual report on safety in the agency, which has been presented to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, President of the Senate Joe Biden and Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan, as well as being published online yesterday.

“The Panel notes that significant progress has been made in identifying the needed capabilities, deciding on potential risk reduction strategies, and assessing the status of the specific technologies, including whether they are sufficiently funded. However, at some point, it will be necessary to provide a more focused evaluation of potential mission architectures in order to have confidence that the needed technologies have been properly funded and that they will be available in time to be incorporated into the actual flight hardware,” the panel wrote in the report.

“Establishment of a Mars Mission Program Office and/or designation of a “Mars Czar” could facilitate the completion of the needed trade studies and ensure that limited funds are being spent on the appropriate technical challenges.”

The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel also cast doubt on the viability of NASA’s current plans, suggesting that even a small hiccup could jeopardise the entire mission.

“At this point in the process, no decisions on specific system architectures have been made. However, it is the Panel’s understanding that even with a SLS [Space Launch System] lift capability of 130 tons, there would be a need for multiple launches per mission potentially augmented with the use of other vehicles such as the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle. With notional NASA out-year budgets assuming one SLS launch per year, plus the long trip times involved (800 to 1,100 days away from Earth), current plans to carry out the Journey to Mars appear to be somewhat “fragile”,” the panel wrote.

“Since SLS would carry the most critical items into deep space, a delay or technical failure on a single launch could significantly impact the entire mission. This should make reliability a high priority for SLS.”

The panel also suggested that the agency could get involved with privately run missions to the Moon in order to use the lunar surface as a testing ground, and ultimately make plans more robust to hitches.

“One option to address this issue would be to take advantage of potential commercial and/or international activities to create a more robust exploration architecture. These commercial and international partnerships could also potentially provide opportunities for NASA to test technologies and systems on the lunar surface. Even if NASA chooses not to take a leadership role in human missions to the Moon, there may be other opportunities to gain valuable experience—with large landers and ascent vehicles, with the operation of systems for in-situ resource extraction, with large-scale habitation systems, and with the long-term impact of dust on space suits and other mechanical systems,” the panel wrote.

“Testing these systems first on the Moon could help to increase the robustness of the overall space infrastructure, enhance the cislunar space economy, and increase the safety of the Mars missions themselves.”