Mars One may be grabbing headlines for pushing one-way manned missions to Mars, but buried deep in NASA’s photo archives lies proof that the agency has been thinking about the journey for decades.
Commissioned by NASA, these artists’ concepts show how the agency (unofficially and very loosely) once envisioned putting humans on the Red Planet. While some technology in the imagery evolved as NASA scientists learned more about Mars, many of the concepts still hold true in the agency’s modern-day mocks for a 2030 manned mission.