Advanced Reconnaissance Missions Needed for Human Exploration of Mars

Planning is underway at NASA to return humans to the Moon by 2025 and from there to Mars in 2030-40s. This paper discusses some of the future Mars reconnaissance missions needed in advance of the first human landing on Mars to ensure astronaut safety and mission success. These include: 1) high resolution mapping of the Martian terrain for identifying optimum landing sites for scientific exploration and safe entry, descent, and landing of crewed missions and safe crew operations; 2) surface weather reconnaissance on Mars which could entail a network of orbital and on-surface meteorological assets; and 3) real-time space weather forecasting on Mars which could require positioning of radiation monitoring assets as well as computational capabilities in Mars orbit. Details regarding needed reconnaissance missions for safe crew operations and corresponding potential future mission concepts  will be discussed.