Towards a Common Basis of Comparison Across a Broad Trade Space of Mars Architecture Options

Over the years, many studies looking at different approaches and concepts for a human Mars mission have been performed. However, it is difficult for present-day Mars studies to take advantage of findings from the past since it is often tedious and time-consuming to tap into this large body of work and reconcile differences in ground rules and assumptions. Currently, the Advanced Concepts Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center is working to recapture and re-baseline previous Mars studies to establish a broad basis of comparison for future Mars studies. This paper is the first step in this re-baselining work, and establishes a plan to enumerate, synthesize, and evaluate previous Mars studies in a common framework.