NASA has a dedicated section on its site for the Journey to Mars initiative. The ambitious plan has two goals: send humans to an asteroid by 2025 and to Mars in the 2030’s.

But why do we need to go to Mars anyway?

Mars is a comparable planet to Earth that once had conditions suitable for life. Exploration to Mars could help answer the age-old questions that get the blood rushing for astronauts and astronomers everywhere: Is there life beyond Earth? Are we alone?

To prepare for this journey, astronauts on the International Space Station are testing technologies and communication systems to make the mission possible, as well as collecting data about how the human body responds to living in space.

NASA will then move into deep space by capturing an asteroid, redirecting it to orbit the moon, and sending astronauts to explore the asteroid on the Orion spacecraft in the 2020’s.

Orion is designed to take humans deeper into space than they have ever been before, including Mars. It will be launched into space on NASA’s new heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System. Orion has already been built, and it even completed a successful flight test in December 2014.

There is already a fleet of robotic spacecraft and rovers collecting data on Mars, and in the future, the Mars 2020 rover will seek signs of past life.

Engineers and scientists throughout the world are working with NASA to develop the technologies necessary for traveling to Mars and then living and working there before returning safely home.

The Journey to Mars section of NASA’s website includes the following sub-pages: Orion Spacecraft, Space Launch System, Ground Systems, Asteroid Redirect Mission, Robotic Mars Mission, International Space Station. There are also tabs for: Images, Video, and Media Resources.

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/journeytomars/index.html