Appeal to Save the Mars Space flight Campaign: Give Generously

Humans could orbit Mars in the 2020s, says a panel appointed by the White House – but only if NASA's budget is boosted. At its current funding level, the agency will be unable to leave low-Earth orbit for at least the next two decades, according to a summary of the panel's report released on Tuesday.

Under President George W Bush, NASA was ordered to return astronauts to the moon by 2020. But in May, the Obama administration set up a panel of space experts to review the space agency's human spaceflight plans. The panel is led by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine.

Though its final report is still being completed, on Tuesday the committee sent a summary of its findings to the White House and NASA. A final decision on NASA's future direction rests with the White House and Congress.

The summary contains a list of five possible ways forward for NASA's human spaceflight programme, without endorsing any particular one over the others.

One of those options, called the Flexible Path, would send astronauts to a series of increasingly distant destinations, starting with a mission to orbit the moon. A mission to an asteroid would follow later, and the plan would culminate in a mission to Mars, which the panel says could be achieved by the mid- to late-2020s.

To avoid breaking the bank, this option would delay development of any landing craft and other hardware needed to actually put astronauts on the planet's surface.