A human mission to Mars will pose significant risks to crews due to limited abort options, lack of access to real- time support from mission control because of communication delays, along with radiation, medical emergencies, equipment failures, and behavioral changes. Our understanding of what is needed to effectively manage and mitigate these risks in terms of new technologies and mission architecture design is incomplete. To improve risk posture in complex human space architectures, one approach is to invest in operational experience, as illustrated by flight tests for new vehicles, and the Apollo, Shuttle, and ISS campaigns. In alignment with NASA’s Moon to Mars strategy, we investigated a lunar campaign architecture for the dual purposes of performing relevant analogs of future Mars missions and valuable lunar activities. This dual-use strategy aims to close knowledge gaps, retire risks and make the first Mars missions safer for crews, while also delivering value for lunar stakeholders. This led to a concept called MARTEMIS, which was first developed as a submission to the 2024 NASA Revolutionary Aerospace Concepts Academic Linkage (RASC-AL) Competition in the Long-duration simulation at the Moon theme. Details of the architecture and trade study performed can be found in the poster below, and expanded upon in our IAC 2024 and IEEE 2025 Conference papers on the same concept.
