Mars Base Camp its moons (Deimos and Phobos), and serve as a proving ground in preparing humans for future missions to the Martian surface. The concept was published in May 2016 by Lockheed Martin, and it is a design for a spacecraft for carrying humans to Mars orbit and conducting operations in Mars orbit. Mars Base Camp harnesses many NASA technologies in development, or technology goals at the time of the 2010s. In September 2017, the plan was updated including a concept for a reusable crewed shuttle called MADV (Mars Ascent Descent Vehicle), which would connect to the MBC Mars space station. Mars
Mars Cube One Mars Cube One Mars Cube One (or MarCO) is a Mars flyby mission that was launched on 5 May 2018 alongside NASA's "InSight" Mars lander mission. It consists of two nanospacecraft, MarCO-A and MarCO-B, that were able to provide a real-time communications link to Earth for "InSight" during its entry, descent, and landing (EDL) on 26 November 2018 - when "InSight" was out of line of sight from the Earth. Both are of the 6U CubeSat format, and the mission is a test of new miniaturized communications and navigation technologies. These are the first CubeSats designed to operate beyond Earth