"This could be the plan to send the first humans to Mars," beams Chris Hirata, 16, a sophomore at Caltech, who, along with three other Caltech undergrads and the support of Caltech's 80 member chapter of the Mars Society, has developed a new plan that would land the first humans on Mars on May 25, 2014.

"On May 25th? Don't you mean by May 25th?" asks Kara Swedlow, a Caltech senior who was treated to an early version of the plan. But Hirata makes it clear: "On May 25th. We calculated the trajectory exactly." The Caltech team calculated a lot of things exactly-from parachutes and retro-rockets for landing on Mars to the chances-good, it turns out-of returning the crew safely.

The team of undergrads, which also includes Jane Greenham and Derek Shannon, 19, and Nathan Brown, 18, all Caltech freshmen, will present their plan, the Mars Society Mission, to NASA's top thinkers on human Mars exploration at the Mars Exploration Forum May 7th at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.

The Mars Society Mission is part of the Mars Society's political and technical efforts to make a human Mars mission a reality, "And having the safest, most reasonable plan possible is a big part of that," explains chapter president Derek Shannon.

In 1989, when then President George Bush announced a new initiative to send humans to Mars and back to the Moon, the effort fell apart when extravagant designs caused the price tag to skyrocket. A reasonable plan using conventional technology, says Shannon, could mean success for a new Mars initiative in the next year or two.

"Based on cost estimates for earlier plans that the Mars Society Mission improves upon, we could send humans to Mars using just a fraction of NASA's budget over the next ten years," explained Shannon.

For a total cost between 30 to 50 billion dollars, less than the current cost of the International Space Station and less than the inflation-adjusted cost of the Apollo missions to the Moon.

Team member Nathan Brown, who designed the Mars Ascent Vehicle that will bring the five-person Mars Society Mission crew back from the Martian surface, explains the need for a new plan.

According to Brown, two leading plans have previously been the focus of debate: lightweight, four-person Mars Direct, created by aerospace engineer and national Mars Society leader Dr. Robert Zubrin, and the bulkier, six-person NASA Reference Mission, developed by NASA's Mars Study Team.

Says Brown, "The Mars Society Mission fixes the problems with these plans by avoiding over-optimistic assumptions and politically sensitive technologies, such as nuclear thermal rocketry."

The Mars Society Mission instead shows how all conventional launch vehicles, similar to those used to launch today's robotic missions, can send the tomorrow's crew of Mars explorers to the Red Planet.

So how does the Mars Society Mission work? The Caltech team tells an intriguing story, with the figures-and even illustrative computer generated movies-to back it up: It all begins on July 1, 2011, when the first payload, the uncrewed Earth Return Vehicle that will wait in orbit around Mars to return the crew to Earth, is sent toward the Red Planet by the Qahira (from the Arabic word for "Mars") Launch Vehicle, which the team also designed.

The Earth Return Vehicle is followed by a Mars Ascent Vehicle and a cargo payload, which reach Mars and begin making methane and oxygen propellant out of the Martian atmosphere for the return home.

In January, 2014, the five-person crew departs Earth in a Crew Return Vehicle that is almost identical to the Earth Return and Mars Ascent Vehicles.

This craft meets with a habitat module ("hab") launched separately to Low Earth Orbit, and together the Crew Return Vehicle and hab take the crew on a 134 day transit to Mars, landing on the potentially famous date of May 25, 2014.

After 612 days exploring, learning, and living on the Martian surface, where the crew will try to answer fundamental questions about life and whether humans will be able to live permanently on Mars, the crew boards their Mars Ascent Vehicle, which blasts off to meet the Earth Return Vehicle in Mars orbit.

Both vehicles take the crew on a 129 day trip back to Earth, where they finally arrive on June 4, 2016, after two and a half years away.

Safety was a primary consideration in designing the Mars Society Mission, says team member Jane Greenham.

According to Greenham, a native of South Africa who lived in Jordan before coming to Caltech, but whose favorite exotic locale is Mars, the team performed a risk analysis of their plan compared to Mars Direct and the NASA Reference Mission, and the Mars Society Mission came out safer every time.

Greenham, who performed much of the safety study, says, "Because the Mars Society Mission uses more complete back-up systems on the way there and back, we can make the crew's safety much more of a sure thing."

Derek Shannon clarifies, saying, "The Mars Society Mission doesn't add more components, it simply finds ways of extending the uses and reuses of the vehicles that will already be necessary to put people on Mars. And because we don't use new technologies like nuclear thermal rocketry, starting a humans-to-Mars program will be less of a problem politically."

The Caltech team has high hopes that the Mars Society Mission will influence NASA's Mars plans for the better, and increase the possibility for a new initiative to send humans to Mars.

Jim Burke, a veteran of several robotic interplanetary missions and the team's faculty advisor, says, "NASA is doing a terrific job of encouraging the new ideas that will make the mission happen."

In addition to their May 7th talk in Houston, the team will be presenting the Mars Society Mission to the general public, at a level accessible to all, on the Caltech campus in Room 119 of the Kerckhoff Laboratory on Sunday, May 2nd, at 3:00 PM, and again in Kerckhoff 119 on Tuesday, May 4th, at 7:30 PM.

Admission is free. Both talks will last approximately forty minutes, and be followed by Q&A and a press session. The team created extensive graphics to illustrate the Mars Society Mission and "bring it alive for everyone, by using computer generated movies of key points," according to Shannon.

Mars Pathfinder: Mission Overview

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