Working Group Evaluates Objectives for Human Exploration and Development of the Moon and Mars

On June 28 and 29, 2022, a delegation from the National Space Society (NSS) was invited to present to NASA’s “Moon to Mars Objectives Workshop” at Space Center Houston, adjacent to the Johnson Space Center. Attendees of the two-day event included representatives of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, Science Mission Directorate, Exploration Systems Development Directorate, and Space Operations Mission Directorate.

“This kind of cooperation between NASA and groups like the National Space Society is what citizen space advocacy is all about,” said Dale Skran, NSS COO. “We’ve been working to advance the human presence in space, and to help NASA and others return the benefits of those efforts to everyone on Earth. This meeting of space advocacy leaders and important NASA officials is a vital step forward for everyone involved.”

NSS subject matter experts included Dr. Rick Jenet, founder and Executive Director of Expanding Frontiers and NSS chapter board member; John Strickland, NSS board member and author of Developing Space and Settling Space; Dr. Gregory Stanley, President of Performity LLC and Vice President of the NSS North Houston chapter; and David Cheuvront, a retired NASA engineer, commercial space advisor and member of the NSS Policy Committee. David Huntsman of the Alliance for Space Development and also a former NASA engineer provided extensive support for the presentation.

The NSS team discussed the acceleration of commercial space development and enhanced private investment, the creation and utilization of space infrastructure, and near-future use of space-derived resources to further NASA’s exploration and space development objectives with sustainable economics.

NSS’s involvement resulted not only in recommendations to the various NASA directorates, but also in an increased understanding of how civilian nonprofits like the National Space Society can better work with NASA to identify and improve coordination of technology development to the benefit of the United States and our planet at large. The NSS priorities for space development encompasses many goals, including off-Earth resource identification and extraction, human expansion into the solar system, the protection of Earth from asteroid impacts, and perhaps most urgently, the mitigation of climate change through clean, carbon-free solar power generated in space and sent to the entire planet.

The NSS presentation can be downloaded as a PDF here. The NSS long-term plan for the development of space is presented in the downloadable Roadmap to Space Settlement.