Mars Design Reference Mission


The NASA Mars Design Reference Mission refer to a series of NASA conceptual design studies of the missions to send humans to Mars. The related term, Design Reference Architecture, refers to the entire sequences of missions and supporting infrastructure.
These are a reference baseline studies summarizing the current technology and possible approaches for a human mission to Mars, and are not actual mission program. According to NASA, the documents "represent a 'snapshot' of work in progress in support of planning for future human exploration of the Martian surface." The design reference missions are used for technology trade studies, to analyze the effect of different approaches to the mission.

Approach and results

The conclusions of the study were that the total mission mass was approximately 900 metric tons for the first crew. The study pointed out that development of the large launch vehicle is a long-lead and expensive system, and approaches using smaller launch vehicles should be investigated.

Principal results

Principal results of the study were