Lifeboat Foundation

Lockheed Martin has revealed plans to set up a ‘Mars base camp’ orbiting the red planet — and says it hopes to launch it within ten years.

Using NASA’s Orion spacecraft as the command deck, the orbiting outpost could give astronauts the ability to operate rovers and drones on the surface in real time, helping us better understand the Red Planet and plan for manned missions.

‘The time is now,’ Lockheed Martin said in a video revealing the project at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Adelaide, Australia, where it also showed off a lander that could eventually take astronauts form the station to the red planet’s surface.