NASA's vision: We reach for new heights and reveal the unknown for the benefit of humankind.

NASA will add to its existing robotic fleet at the Red Planet with the InSight Mars lander set to study the planet’s interior.  The Mars 2020 rover will look for signs of past microbial life, gather samples for future return to Earth and investigate resources that could someday support astronauts.

The James Webb Space Telescope will be the premier observatory of the next decade, studying every phase in the history of our Universe in infrared, while the Parker Solar Probe will “touch the sun,” travelling closer to the surface than any spacecraft before. NASA’s first asteroid sample return mission, OSIRIS-RE x , arrives at the near-Earth asteroid Bennu in August 2018, and will return a sample for study in 2023. Launching no later than June 2018, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will search for planets outside our solar system by monitoring 200,000 bright, nearby stars.

And a mission to Jupiter's ocean-bearing moon Europa is being planned for launch in the 2020s.

Sending Humans into Deep Space

Building on this growing scientific knowledge of our solar system, NASA is developing the most advanced rocket and spacecraft to extend human presence farther into space than we have ever traveled before. Launching from a revitalized NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the agency’s powerful Space Launch System rocket will carry astronauts aboard NASA's Orion spacecraft past the Moon, and eventually to Mars.

NASA will test its new deep space exploration system beginning with an integrated, uncrewed flight of SLS and Orion, known as Exploration Mission-1 . During the second and subsequent early flights, NASA has proposed building a flexible deep space infrastructure near the Moon. The deep space gateway concept includes a power and propulsion element , a small habitat , and a logistics module for research. While living and working from Earth for long periods of time, NASA will build up its deep space capabilities before ultimately sending humans to the Red Planet in the 2030s.

International Space Station

Humans are already living and working off the Earth in the one-of-a kind research laboratory in microgravity. The International Space Station serves as a blueprint for global cooperation and scientific advancements, a destination for growing a commercial marketplace in low-Earth orbit, and a test bed for demonstrating new technologies. Research on the station is the springboard to NASA’s next great leap in exploration, sending humans into deep space. A new generation of U.S. commercial spacecraft and rockets are supplying cargo to the space station and will soon launch astronauts once again from U.S. soil. By studying astronauts living in space for six months or more -- including two who were there for nearly a year -- NASA is learning how future crews can thrive on longer missions farther into the solar system. The space station also is a test bed for exploration technologies like autonomous refueling of spacecraft, advanced life support systems and human/robotic interfaces .