Mars Architecture Studies: NASA web page¶
Page: https://www.nasa.gov/moontomarsarchitecture-marsarchitecturestudies/. No date on the
page. Fetched 2026-10-01T07:22:08Z. File:
sources/text/pages/moontomarsarchitecture-marsarchitecturestudies.md.
Summary. A library of earlier NASA studies of human Mars exploration: "NASA is compiling
historical documents related to Mars exploration architectures. This library illuminates the growing
body of architectural work related to crewed exploration of the Red Planet." For the current
architecture it points back to the ADD. ADD Rev C refers readers to "the Mars architecture studies"
on NASA's architecture website for historic reference missions (p. 38, footnote 11;
Humans to Mars). This page is that
list. None of the documents is among the wiki's sources (checked against sources/manifest.csv
by title); they are historical (tier 3 of the agreed source plan).
The documents, as listed¶
| Date, as printed | Title | NASA's description (quoted, shortened) |
|---|---|---|
| 2014, March | Human Exploration of Mars Design Reference Architecture 5.0, Addendum #2 | "the second Addendum to NASA-SP-2009-566", covering assessments and studies "predominately … from 2009 through 2012" |
| 2009, July | Human Exploration of Mars Design Reference Architecture 5.0, Addendum | "additional detail and analyses conducted in the development of DRA 5.0" |
| 2009, July | Human Exploration of Mars Design Reference Architecture 5.0 | "a vision of a potential approach for human Mars exploration", "a common framework for future planning of systems concepts, technology development, and operational testing" |
| 1998, June | Reference Mission Version 3.0 Addendum to the Human Exploration of Mars: The Reference Mission of the NASA Mars Exploration Study Team | an addendum to NASA Special Publication 6107 |
| 1997, July | Human Exploration of Mars: The Reference Mission of the NASA Mars Exploration Study Team | "a reference from which we can continuously compare and contrast other new innovative approaches" |
| 1989, November | Report of the 90-Day Study on Human Exploration of the Moon and Mars | "an internal NASA report … led by Johnson Space Center", a database "for the Space Council" |
| 1991, May | America at the Threshold: America's Space Exploration Initiative | "a vision for the 21st century" |
Order as on the page (1991 after 1989). The page's quotations carry typos ("Design Referencea", "amp;and"), not corrected here.
Where else these appear in the wiki¶
- The 2024 ascent-propellant white paper cites DRA 5.0 as its 2009 study (source page).
- The 2023 strategy document's history of earlier plans says "The Moon to Mars endeavor finds its roots in 1989" (source page). It names none of these documents (searched for "90-Day", "Design Reference" and "Space Exploration Initiative").
Related pages¶
Humans to Mars · Mars Architecture Trade Space page · Strategy and Objectives page