List of manned Mars mission plans in the 20th century

The list of manned Mars mission plans in the 20th century is a listing of formal proposals, studies, and plans for a human manned mission to Mars

Mars

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...

during the 20th century. It is limited to serious studies done with engineering and scientific knowledge about the capabilities of then current technology, typically for high-budget space agencies like NASA

NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...

. Mission profiles included manned flybys, manned landers, or other types of Mars system encounter strategies. A manned Mars lander, often called a Mars Excursion Module (MEM), enabled Mars orbit rendezvous

Mars orbit rendezvous

Mars orbit rendezvous is a concept for space travel, where a spacecraft takes off from Mars and does a rendezvous in Mars orbit with another spacecraft...

or flyby rendezvous. For 21st century mission and later plans; see Manned mission to Mars

Manned mission to Mars

A manned mission to Mars has been the subject of science fiction, engineering, and scientific proposals throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century...

.

Over the last century, a number of mission concepts for such an expedition have been proposed. David Portree's history volume Humans to Mars: Fifty Years of Mission Planning, 1950—2000 discusses many of these. Portee notes, every 26 Earth months a lower energy Earth to Mars transfer opportunity opens, so missions typically coincide with one of these windows. In addition, the lowest available transfer energy varies on a roughly 16 year cycle, with a minimum in the 1969 and 1971 launch windows, rising to a peak in the late 70s, and hitting another low in 1986 and 1988. Also of note, the successful United States NASA

NASA

Mariner 4

Mariner 4 was the fourth in a series of spacecraft, launched on November 28, 1964, intended for planetary exploration in a flyby mode and performed the first successful flyby of the planet Mars, returning the first pictures of the Martian surface...

Mars flyby in 1965 provided radically more accurate data about the planet; a surface atmospheric pressure

Atmospheric pressure

Atmospheric pressure is the force per unit area exerted into a surface by the weight of air above that surface in the atmosphere of Earth . In most circumstances atmospheric pressure is closely approximated by the hydrostatic pressure caused by the weight of air above the measurement point...

of about 1% of Earth's and daytime temperatures of -100 degrees Celsius

Celsius

Celsius is a scale and unit of measurement for temperature. It is named after the Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius , who developed a similar temperature scale two years before his death...

(-148 degrees Fahrenheit) were estimated. No magnetic field

Magnetic field

A magnetic field is a mathematical description of the magnetic influence of electric currents and magnetic materials. The magnetic field at any given point is specified by both a direction and a magnitude ; as such it is a vector field.Technically, a magnetic field is a pseudo vector;...

or Martian radiation belts

Van Allen radiation belt

The Van Allen radiation belt is a torus of energetic charged particles around Earth, which is held in place by Earth's magnetic field. It is believed that most of the particles that form the belts come from solar wind, and other particles by cosmic rays. It is named after its discoverer, James...

were detected. The new data meant redesigns for planned Martian landers, and showed life would have a more difficult time surviving there than previously anticipated. Later NASA probes in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s confirmed the findings.

The first "engineering analysis" of a manned mission to Mars was made by Wernher von Braun

Wernher von Braun

Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun was a German rocket scientist, aerospace engineer, space architect, and one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany during World War II and in the United States after that.A former member of the Nazi party,...

in 1948. It was originally published as Das Marsprojekt in West Germany

West Germany

West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....

in 1952, and as The Mars Project
The Mars Project
The Mars Project is a nonfiction science book by German rocket physicist, astronautics engineer and space architect, Wernher von Braun. It was translated from the original German by Henry J. White and first published in English by the University of Illinois Press in 1953.The Mars Project is a...

in English in the United States in 1953. Von Braun's Mars "flotilla" included ten 4,000-ton ships with 70 crewmembers. The expected launch year was 1965.

List

The list is in semi-chronological order, with some groupings, as variation can exist in the dating of a given plan. Various references were consulted. LEO mass refers to how much hardware must be put in low Earth orbit

Low Earth orbit

A low Earth orbit is generally defined as an orbit within the locus extending from the Earth’s surface up to an altitude of 2,000 km...

for the mission. For comparison, the low Earth orbit

Low Earth orbit

A low Earth orbit is generally defined as an orbit within the locus extending from the Earth’s surface up to an altitude of 2,000 km...

payload capacity per launch of the U.S. Space Shuttle

Space Shuttle

The Space Shuttle was a manned orbital rocket and spacecraft system operated by NASA on 135 missions from 1981 to 2011. The system combined rocket launch, orbital spacecraft, and re-entry spaceplane with modular add-ons...

is about 25 metric tons, and that of the Saturn V

Saturn V

The Saturn V was an American human-rated expendable rocket used by NASA's Apollo and Skylab programs from 1967 until 1973. A multistage liquid-fueled launch vehicle, NASA launched 13 Saturn Vs from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida with no loss of crew or payload...

, 120 metric tons.

Name	Crew	LEO Low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit is generally defined as an orbit within the locus extending from the Earth’s surface up to an altitude of 2,000 km... mass (metric tons)	A planned launch year
Von Braun Mars 1952 (Das Marsprojekt The Mars Project The Mars Project is a nonfiction science book by German rocket physicist, astronautics engineer and space architect, Wernher von Braun. It was translated from the original German by Henry J. White and first published in English by the University of Illinois Press in 1953.The Mars Project is a... )	70	37200	1965
Von Braun Mars 1956 (The Exploration of Mars)	12	3400	1970
Stuhlinger Mars 1954–1957	20	660	1980
Stuhlinger Mars 1962	15	1800	1975
Bono Mars 1960	8	800	1971
NASA Lewis Mars 1960	6	614	1971
Martian Piloted Complex Martian Piloted Complex The Martian Piloted Complex or MPK was a Soviet Union Mars expedition proposed by Mikhail Tikhonravov. It featured a six Cosmonaut crew on a 900 day mission, with a launch in 1975.... 1958–1962	6	1630	1975
TMK-1 TMK TMK was the designation of a Soviet Union space exploration project to send a manned flight to Mars and Venus without landing.... 1961 (flyby)	3	75	1971
TMK-2 TMK TMK was the designation of a Soviet Union space exploration project to send a manned flight to Mars and Venus without landing.... (TMK-E)	2		1971
EMPIRE Aeronutronic 1962	6	227	1970
EMPIRE General Dynamics 1962	8	900	1975
EMPIRE Lockheed 1962	3	100	1974
Faget Mars (heavy) 1963	6	1140
Faget Mars (light) 1963	6	280
TRW Mars Expedition 1962	6	650	1975
Project Deimos	6	3965	1986
UMPIRE Douglas 1963	6	450	1975
Douglas MORL Mars Flyby 1965	3	360	1973
NASA JAG Manned Mars Flyby 1966	4		1975
NASA NERVA-Electric Mars 1966	5	1552	1986
Korolev KK (TMK TMK TMK was the designation of a Soviet Union space exploration project to send a manned flight to Mars and Venus without landing.... ) 1966	3	150	1980
Titus FLEM 1966	3	118	1985
Boeing IMIS 1968	6	1226	1985
Mars Expeditionary Complex (MEK) 1969	3	150	1980
Von Braun Mars 1969	12	1452	1981
NASA Mars Expedition 1971	6	1900	1987
Mars in 30 Days (Ragsdale 1972)	5	2041
MK-700 1972	2	1400	1980
Chelomei 1974 (MK-700 flyby)	2	250	1980
British Interplanetary Society Mars 1982	8	1300
Planetary Society Mars Expedition 1983	4	160	2003
Paine 1984 (Pioneering the Space Frontier)			2026
NASA-LANL Manned Mars Flyby 1985		358
NPO Energia Mars 1986	4	365	2000
Case for Mars II 1986	30	1900	2007
NASA Ride Report 1986	6	210	2004
NASA Mars Evolution 1988	8	330	2013
NASA Mars Expedition 1988	8	1628	2007
NASA Phobos Expedition 1988	4	765	2003
NASA 90 Day Study 1989	4	1300	2017
NPO Energia Mars 1989	4	355	2001
Mars Evolution 1989	5		2007
NASA Mars Expedition 1989	3	780	2004
Mars Direct Mars Direct Mars Direct is a proposal for a manned mission to Mars. Proponents of the scheme have claimed it to be both cost-effective and that it can be conducted with current technology. It was originally detailed in a research paper by NASA engineers Robert Zubrin and David Baker in 1990, and later expanded... (Zubrin 1991)	4	220	1997
STCAEM CAB 1991	4	800	2016
STCAEM NEP 1991	4	500	2016
STCAEM NTR 1991	4	800	2016
STCAEM SEP 1991	4	410	2016
NASA Synthesis Study 1991	6	1080	2014
NASA Design Reference Mission 1.0 1993	6	900	2007
Kurchatov Mars 1994	5	800	2010
Zubrin Athena (flyby)	2	100	2001
NASA Design Reference Mission 3 1997	6	410	2011
NASA Mars Combo Lander 1998	4	280	2011
NASA Dual Lander Mission	12	600	2011
NASA Design Reference Mission 4 1998	6	400	2011
Mars Society Mission 1999	10	900	2011
Marspost (Gorshkov 2000)	6	400	2017

List

See also

Further reading and external links