The complete guide to Mars exploration

Mars is the most-visited planet beyond Earth and the stated destination of the world's largest rocket program. It is also farther away, in every sense, than the headlines suggest. This guide maps what is actually happening: the robots working there now, the programs in flux, and the honest gap between today and boots on the ground.

The robots working on Mars right now

As of August 2026 two NASA rovers are active. Perseverance is caching samples around Jezero Crater, carries the strongest biosignature candidate yet found, and passed a full marathon of driving, 42.195 kilometers, on June 14, 2026. Curiosity turned 14 years old on the surface in August 2026 and is still climbing Mount Sharp, more than 37 kilometers driven and 1.35 kilometers of elevation gained. Six orbiters relay their data and map the planet: NASA's Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, ESA's Mars Express and Trace Gas Orbiter, the United Arab Emirates' Hope, and China's Tianwen-1. The ranks thinned in 2026. NASA lost contact with the MAVEN atmospheric orbiter on December 6, 2025 and declared the 11-year mission over on June 3, 2026, and China's Zhurong rover has been silent since it entered winter dormancy in May 2022. Two more spacecraft are waiting their turn: NASA's ESCAPADE twins, launched on New Glenn in November 2025, are loitering near the Sun-Earth L2 point until a departure burn planned for November 2026, with arrival at Mars in September 2027.

The sample return saga

Perseverance has spent five years filling tubes with the most carefully chosen rocks ever collected, on the promise that a Mars Sample Return mission would fetch them. It has used 33 of the 43 tubes it carries, and ten were dropped at a backup depot called Three Forks in 2022-2023. That promise is currently broken. Ballooning costs put the campaign in restructuring in 2023-2024, and the appropriations agreement released in January 2026 named no money for it, funding a 110 million dollar Mars Future Missions line instead. Nothing was formally terminated, but no retrieval mission is funded and no pickup date exists. China's Tianwen-3 could plausibly return the first Martian material instead: two launches in 2028, a target of at least 500 grams collected by scoop, two-meter drill, and a sample-grabbing drone, and a return to Earth in July 2031.

What SpaceX actually plans

Starship exists, by Elon Musk's account, to make Mars settlement possible. The concrete status as of August 2026: thirteen test flights, no orbital mission yet, and orbital refueling, mandatory for any Mars trip, still undemonstrated. Flight 12 released two modified Starlink spacecraft, and Flight 13 on July 24, 2026 released the first 20 production Starlink V3 satellites, all on suborbital arcs. Flight 14 was targeted for late August as the first orbital attempt. In February 2026 SpaceX shifted its near-term focus to the Moon, telling investors it would prioritize an uncrewed lunar landing in March 2027 and dropping the late-2026 Mars window; the 2028-2029 alignment is now the earliest plausible uncrewed attempt. Musk's timelines have historically run optimistic, a pattern he acknowledges.

What stands between humans and Mars

The honest list is long. Radiation: a round trip approaches career dose limits with today's shielding. Time and distance: 6-9 months each way, with launch windows every 26 months and no rescue option. Landing: the heaviest object yet soft-landed on Mars is the one-tonne Perseverance; crewed missions need 20-100 times that. Living there: propellant, water, and food must be made locally (Perseverance's MOXIE experiment made oxygen from the atmosphere, a real first step). NASA's own architecture treats crewed Mars as a 2040s prospect, contingent on the Moon program proving the tools.

How to follow along

Watch four storylines. Starship's propellant transfer demonstration is the single biggest unlock, and SpaceX says it aims to attempt one before the end of 2026. The Jezero sample cache has no funded ride home. China's Tianwen-3 launches in 2028. And several missions are still on the way: JAXA's Martian Moons eXploration probe is set to launch in Japanese fiscal 2026 and return more than 10 grams of Phobos in 2031, and ESA's Rosalind Franklin rover, stranded when its Russian launch was cancelled in 2022, has a ride again, with NASA beginning implementation in April 2026 for a launch no earlier than late 2028 on a Falcon Heavy. The timeline tracks milestones as they happen, and the rover articles are updated as discoveries land.

Frequently asked questions

Is anyone on Mars right now?

No humans, and no one has ever been. Two active NASA rovers (Perseverance and Curiosity) and six orbiters were working there as of August 2026.

When could humans realistically go?

SpaceX talks about crewed landings in the early 2030s if uncrewed Starship landings succeed in the 2028-2029 window; NASA's architecture points to the 2040s. Both depend on technology (orbital refueling, precision heavy landing, life support) that does not exist yet at the needed scale, and SpaceX moved its own near-term priority to the Moon in February 2026.

Why did Mars Sample Return stall?

Cost estimates grew toward 11 billion dollars with return dates slipping past 2040. NASA outlined two cheaper architectures in January 2025, costed at 5.8 to 7.7 billion dollars, but Congress removed the program's funding in the January 2026 appropriations agreement before a choice was made, leaving 110 million dollars for a broader Mars Future Missions line. The collected samples remain cached on Mars.

Did Mars ever have life?

Unknown. Ancient Mars had rivers, lakes, and organic chemistry, and in September 2025 the Perseverance team published a Nature paper describing a mudstone called Cheyava Falls, sampled in July 2024, as holding one of the strongest potential biosignatures yet found. A potential biosignature is not a detection of life; confirming biology likely requires returning samples to Earth labs.