Human mission to Mars in the context of "Ingenuity (helicopter)"

Perseverance is a NASA rover that has been exploring Mars since February 18, 2021, as part of the Mars 2020 mission. Built and managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, it was launched on July 30, 2020, from Cape Canaveral aboard an Atlas V rocket and landed in Jezero Crater, a site chosen for its ancient river delta that may preserve evidence of past microbial life.

The rover's main goals are to search for signs of ancient life, study the planet's geology and climate, and collect rock and regolith samples for possible return to Earth by a future mission. Perseverance also tests technologies intended to support later human exploration, including an experiment that successfully produced oxygen from the thin carbon-dioxide atmosphere.

The Artemis program is a Moon exploration program led by the United States' National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), formally established in 2017 via Space Policy Directive 1. The program is intended to reestablish a human presence on the Moon for the first time since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972, with a stated long-term goal of establishing a permanent base on the Moon. This will facilitate human missions to Mars.

Two principal elements of the Artemis program are derived from the now-cancelled Constellation program: the Orion spacecraft (with the ESM instead of a US-built service module) and the Space Launch System's (SLS) solid rocket boosters (originally developed for the Ares V). Other elements of the program, such as the Lunar Gateway space station and the Human Landing System, are in development by government space agencies and private spaceflight companies, collaborations bound by the Artemis Accords and governmental contracts.

The Caves of Mars Project was an early 2000s program funded through Phase II by the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, now known as the NASA Innovative Advanced Conceptsto demonstrate the feasibility of constructing human habitats in Martian caves, lavatubes, and other subsurface voids to facilitate scientific research for a potential human mission to Mars. The final report was published in mid 2004.

Space advocacy is supporting or advocating human activity in outer space. The advocated purposes range from orbital flight, space exploration, commercialization of space and space settlement, to outright space colonization.

There are many different individuals and organizations dedicated to space advocacy. They are usually active in educating the public on space-related subjects, lobbying governments for increased funding in space-related activities or supporting private space activities.

Human outposts are artificially-created, controlled human habitats located in environments inhospitable for humans, such as on the ocean floor, in the Antarctic, in outer space, or on another planet, as in the challenges to live on Mars.

The logistics and difficulties inherent in such ventures have been heavily explored in science fiction.