A Lean, Fast Mars Round-trip Mission Architecture: Using Current Technologies for a Human Mission in the 2030s
We present a lean fast-transfer architecture concept for a first human mission to Mars that utilizes current technologies and two pivotal parameters: an end-to-end Mars mission duration of approximately one year, and a deep space habitat of approximately 50 metric tons. These par
Selection note: Curated as a quantitative Mars architecture case that constrains total mission duration and habitat mass to expose propulsion, radiation, logistics, and integration trades.
Evidence boundary: NTRS lists open full text, but this pass did not reproduce the architecture model or validate its technology assumptions. It is a comparative design case, not automatic evidence for a Mars or generation-ship mission.
We present a lean fast-transfer architecture concept for a first human mission to Mars that utilizes current technologies and two pivotal parameters: an end-to-end Mars mission duration of approximately one year, and a deep space habitat of approximately 50 metric tons. These parameters were formulated by a 2012 deep space habitat study conducted at the NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) that focused on a subset of recognized high- engineering-risk factors that may otherwise limit space travel to destinations such as Mars or near-Earth asteroid (NEA)s. With these constraints, we model and promote Mars mission opportunities in the 2030s enabled by a combination of on-orbit staging, mission element pre-positioning, and unique round-trip trajectories identified by state-of-the-art astrodynamics algorithms.
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NTRS lists open full text, but this pass did not reproduce the architecture model or validate its technology assumptions. It is a comparative design case, not automatic evidence for a Mars or generation-ship mission.
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2026-07-25
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