How man will land on Mars: Nasa video reveals steps needed to transport humans to Mars by 2030s (video)

Last week Nasa announced to the world the steps they would be taking in order to land humans on the red planet, the Daily Mail reports. 

And now, in a video, they've revealed the missions, technologies and developments that will make a manned mission to Mars possible.

The footage shows how current technology such as the International Space Station (ISS), in tandem with future endeavors - including visiting an asteroid - will see humans take the first steps on the fourth planet from the sun.

In the video Nasa highlights the development of the heavy-lift rocket known as the Space Launch System (SLS) as being integral to a Mars mission.

This rocket, when complete, will be the most powerful ever built - dwarfing even the Saturn V that took humans to the Moon.

The huge lifting power of the SLS - up to 130 ton - will enable it to take the components and fuel needed for a nine-month trip to Mars.

This will be accompanied by other vehicles that will carry unmanned cargo spacecraft.

Some of these could be powered by innovative means such as Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP), an emerging technology that is a form of ion propulsion.

Meanwhile, advanced vehicles such as the Orion spacecraft will handled the manned aspects of the mission.

On 4 December this year, Orion will launch on its first ever mission, completing two orbits of Earth without a crew before returning home.

The mission is important as the capsule will be raised to an altitude of 3,600 miles (5,800 km), over 13 times higher than the orbit of the ISS.

This will give it a very high re-entry speed of about 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometres) per hour - the fastest since the days of the Apollo mission.

The purpose of this will be to test the re-entry capabilities of the spacecraft, as it will need to be able to handle these speeds when returning a crew from a Mars mission.

'Our next step is deep space, where NASA will send a robotic mission to capture and redirect an asteroid to orbit the moon,' Nasa said in the announcement last week.

'Astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft will explore the asteroid in the 2020s, returning to Earth with samples.

'This experience in human spaceflight beyond low-Earth orbit will help Nasa test new systems and capabilities, such as Solar Electric Propulsion, which we’ll need to send cargo as part of human missions to Mars.'

A House subcommittee recently approved an authorisation bill that would allow Nasa to redirect an asteroid into the moon’s orbit, land astronauts there and use the asteroid as a testing outpost and way station on the way to Mars.

'Beginning in FY 2018, Nasa’s powerful Space Launch System rocket will enable these “proving ground” missions to test new capabilities,' Nasa said.

'Human missions to Mars will rely on Orion and an evolved version of SLS that will be the most powerful launch vehicle ever flown.'

The agency will now have to spell out the cost and details of the mission as part of an exploration 'roadmap' to Mars that Nasa will have to submit to Congress.

Associate Nasa Administrator Bill Gerstenmaier told members of a Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation subcommittee that the agency remains on target to launch an uncrewed mission in 2017 to test the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion multi-purpose crew vehicle that will carry astronauts to Mars.

Avionics testing of solid rocket boosters was completed last week at Kennedy Space Center in preparation for tests of the SLS rocket's components, and acoustic testing is also underway.

'There is real hardware in manufacture for the path to Mars,' Gerstenmaier told senators.

'Our architecture is designed for long-term human exploration of our solar system, including the goal of human missions to Mars.'

The hearing, called 'From Here to Mars,' outlined intermediate space missions being planned as steps toward long-duration space travel.

'With the technologies and techniques we develop, we will enable expeditions to multiple destinations, ultimately allowing us to pioneer Mars and other destinations as we lay the groundwork for permanent human settlements in the solar system,' Gerstenmaier said.

One planned mission is to a near-Earth asteroid, Gerstenmaier said.

'Nasa will employ SLS and Orion for an early human exploration mission to perform pioneering human operations further from the Earth than ever before, rendezvousing with and returning samples from an asteroid redirected to at stable orbit around the Moon by the robotic segment of the Asteroid Redirect Mission (Arm),' he explained.

'We're going to grab a piece of the solar system, we're going to deflect it around the moon and insert it into a distant retrograde orbit around the moon where our crews can go visit,' he said.

'To think we're moving a piece of the solar system for our use that will allow us to learn skills and techniques that we need to push the human presence into the solar system, that's a pretty awe-inspiring statement.'

However, the ambitious Mars mission could be delayed or derailed if funding from a budget-conscious Congress continues to erode, or if other countries’ plans for a lunar mission force the U.S. to change course for security reasons.