Lockheed Martin's Mars Base Camp concept

In a few hours at 2017 International Astronautical Conference American aerospace, advanced technologies and defense company Lockheed Martin will give an update to its Mars Base Camp concept. If accepted by NASA the Mars Base Camp would be a manned "Mars-orbiting science laboratory where astronauts can perform real-time scientific exploration, analyze Martian rock and soil samples, and confirm the ideal place to land humans on the surface in the 2030s." The proposed mission would send humans to Mars orbit by 2028 and is "designed to be led by NASA and its international and commercial partners."

Recently Lockheed Martin has released some concept images for the mission (open link in new tab to view in full resolution):

HD images from Mars 2030 VR experience

Mars 2030 VR is the latest education-focused virtual reality simulation set on Mars. It has been launched for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift headsets, soon to come to PlayStation VR, and has been developed in partnership with NASA. MARS 2030 centers on open world exploration, covering ~40 square kilometers of the Mawrth Vallis region, accurately mapped and modeled using MRO HiRISE satellite data. Taking on the role of an astronaut, players traverse Mars and collect geological samples that uncover the planet’s past.

Here are some HD quality images from the game (open link in new tab to view in full resolution):

Map of possible landing sites for Red Dragon and Mars2020/ExoMars missions

Jake Robins from WeMartians Podcast has created a map of possible landing sites for SpaceX's first Red Dragon lander and NASA's Mars 2020 / ESA&Roscosmos's ExoMars rovers.

• Red X = crashed/failed landings 
• Green circle = successful landings 
• Yellow ? mark = candidate sites for Mars2020/ExoMars 
• Space "X" = candidate sites for Red Dragon

It is presumed that the most possible landing site for SpaceX's first Red Dragon lander is southern Arcadia Planitia. We will see.

HD images of NASA's base on Mars, 2117, a vision by Blackbird Interactive

In collaboration with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a Canadian game developer Blackbird Interactive is building NASA's vision of what a Mars base would look like 100 years from now. The "Project Eagle" base is set near the Mount Sharp at Gale crater and the interactive vision was presented at DICE 2017 game developer summit on 22nd of February.

Here are HD 1152p quality images from the project (open link in new tab to view in full resolution):

Here are HD 1080p screenshots from the demonstration videos (open link in new tab to view in full resolution):

NASA's Mars base concept by Alexey Rubakin

Picture of the Day 25/11/2016 - Concept for NASA's base on Mars by Russian concept artist Alexey Rubakin. More of his art here.

(Open link in new tab to view ⇩ in full resolution)

Mars greenhouse by NASA

Picture of the Day 14/8/16 - Mars greenhouse by NASA.

(Open link in new tab to view ⇩ in full resolution)

HD images from Journey to Space documentary

Journey to Space is a 2015 3D documentary which "unveils a new era of unprecedented deep space exploration" presented by Boeing and Toyota. In the ending it features a good animation of NASA's Journey to Mars mission. Here are some HD quality screens of it.

(Open link in new tab to view ⇩ in full resolution)

Video: NASA's Journey to Mars

In recent months NASA has released some exciting videos visualizing its "Journey to Mars". What is more important - they represent a conceptual shift from Apollo's style approach [every expedition to it's own location] to a more longsighted approach - every expedition to the same one location. At the workshop in October, 2015 NASA officials revealed that "human exploration of Mars is not planned as a single mission, but a series of three to five expeditions, each with a crew of four to six, lasting about 500 Martian days each. All would land in the same exploration zone, or EZ. The plan includes the construction of a surface field station to be located in the center of the exploration." It means that NASA's "Journey to Mars" mission concept has become more friendly to a goal of a permanent human colony on Mars.

NASA's base on Mars after a few decades:

5 spacecraft currently orbiting Mars

In a recent article "Traffic around Mars gets busy" the NASA/JPL summed up some facts about spacecraft currently orbiting Mars. The most interesting is the provided graphic of their orbits around Mars (together with planet's two natural satellites Phobos & Deimos):

So there are 5 active Mars orbiters currently orbiting the planet:

The Mars Underground, updated edition

The Mars Underground is a documentary about the dream to get to Mars.. about the disappointment of "space era" kids/youth for NASA not going further after the human landing on Moon on 1969. One of such kids was visionary rocket scientist, the president of The Mars Society Robert Zubrin who with his team has developed his own plan for getting humans to Mars and back - Mars Direct (with updated mission architecture called "Mars Semi-Direct"). They are confident the mission could be carried out in a decade if only NASA would dare to try. It would be the first step for colonizing Mars and thereby making humanity a multi-planet civilization.

As the documentary was released in May, 2007 it doesn't cover the more recent plans for Mars colonization/exploration by SpaceX.

You can watch the most recent version (labeled as "Updated edition/Director's cut") of the film here:

ISECG strategy for long-range human space exploration

The International Space Exploration Coordination Group (ISECG) is a forum of 14 most advanced government space agencies - ASI (Italy), CNES (France), CNSA (China), CSA (Canada), CSIRO (Australia), DLR (Germany), ESA (European Space Agency), ISRO (India), JAXA (Japan), KARI (Republic of Korea), NASA (United States of America), NSAU (Ukraine), Roscosmos (Russia), UKSA (United Kingdom). Its main goal is to advance a long-range human space exploration strategy.

On August, 2013 12 ISECG member agencies (including NASA) released the most recent update to the Global Exploration Roadmap. The summary can be seen in this infographic:

On April 10-11, 2014 NASA plans to host a workshop to discuss the updates to this roadmap.

Hope, the private pioneers like SpaceX, Mars One and others will speed up those plans a bit!