Nasa begins a three-day workshop to discuss landing sites for human missions to Mars, but without a budget is such a mission just a flight of fantasy?

Nasa begin a three-day discussion about where to land humans on Mars today. The workshop takes place at the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI), Houston, Texas.

The website says, “The purpose of this workshop is to identify and discuss candidate locations where humans could land, live, and work on the martian surface.” The agency will also stream the entire event (see viewer above).



During the discussions, scientists will identify ‘exploration zones’ and these will contain a number of ‘regions of interest’. Regions of interest are either scientifically interesting areas, or places where resources can be found that will make living on Mars easier.

The size of the exploration zone must be no more than 200km across. This is because future human missions are imagined to have rovers that can carry astronauts up to 100km away from their landing site.

Once the candidate exploration zones have been defined, Nasa will use future missions to map these regions in detail from orbit. This will show the true scientific potential of the sites and the quantity of resources likely to be found. The landscape will determine what rover technology is needed to get around.

Mars has been much in the news lately. Scientifically, there has been the discovery of salty water flows on the surface. Culturally, there has been Ridley Scott’s well received film, The Martian. In a Nasa press release on 8 October, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden stated,“Nasa is closer to sending American astronauts to Mars than at any point in our history.”

It all makes Mars seem terribly exciting and immediate but the truth is far more sobering. There is no budget commitment to a human mission to Mars. Even Nasa’s own estimates don’t peg boots on the ground until sometime in the 2030s. So, do we really need to be talking about landing sites now, two decades before the earliest they will be needed?

It is a confusing time for Nasa. Public interest in Mars is clearly high, but the political will to commit to a human mission is all but absent.

At the beginning of the month, the agency released its Journey to Mars document. This outlined the tightrope that the agency is trying to walk, developing technology and know-how that will eventually make the journey to Mars seem like a logical next-step.

The document also makes it clear that the key to making a Mars mission happen is international partnerships and there Nasa faces another huge problem. There appears to be little appetite for a mission straight to Mars.

Esa have made their enthusiasm for a return to the Moon very clear. They released a video to this effect in January. Professor Johann-Dietrich Woerner, their newly appointed director general is openly talking about a Moon village. He told the BBC, “This Moon village should mean partners from all over the world contributing to this community with robotic and astronaut missions and support communication satellites.”

Clearly there is a major gulf across the Atlantic to be bridged. Until there is common agreement between the major space agencies all talk of journeys to Mars or the Moon, remain in the science fiction category.

Stuart Clark is the author of The Unknown Universe (Head of Zeus). He is teaching the Guardian Masterclass, How the Universe Works in December.