National Aeronautics and Space Administration together with its contractors are planning to have astronauts by mid of 2026 to spend a number of months at a time aboard spacecraft that operates near the moon.

Funds for the proposed platforms, however, are still uncertain and so are the engineering decisions as what the government officials stated during the space conference conducted earlier this week.

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Tony Antonelli, the chief technologist of Lockheed Martin Corporation, said that it would keep NASA's theme of continued human space exploration once the old 1990s vintage station stops its operations, The Wall Street Journal reported. He also added that agency officials are still trying to figure out the right way in order to establish a seamless transition.

With the period of proposed missions beginning at a month and progressively lasting for so many times longer, the crews would conduct a number of scientific experiments and at the same time check out their environment, West California News reported. Apart from that, they would also collect other important data with regard to physiological impact of long exposure to radiation as well as zero gravity.

Furthermore, NASA also foresees several years of missions to cislunar space, which is a region between the Earth and the moon that has not been examined yet. This long-term goal aims to turn specific lessons learned into building blocks for the future manned trip to the red planet, which would last for about three years.

The most significant space discovery of 2015 is the red planet's overflowing water. Jim Green, head of Directory of Planetary Science at NASA headquarters, made an announcement at a much awaited press conference in September, "What we are going to announce today is Mars is not the dry, arid planet that we thought of in the past," he explained via News Australia. "Today, we are going to announce that under certain circumstances, liquid water has been found on Mars, " Mr Green added.

The estimated date for the initial manned mission to Mars would start sometime in mid 2030s. However, there might be some delays if preparatory moon missions run into some glitches.