Sending astronauts to a deep-space outpost beyond the moon's far side could help lay the groundwork for more ambitious manned missions to Mars, some researchers say.

Such a lunar effort would take humanity farther from Earth than it's ever been before, allowing scientists and engineers to work their way up to even more distant targets such as asteroids and Marsin a stepwise fashion, advocates say.

"It's a really good way to basically dip your toes in deep space," Josh Hopkins, a space exploration architect for Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver, said during a Nov. 14 presentation with NASA's Future In-Space Operations working group.

Beyond the lunar far side

NASA is apparently thinking seriously about launching astronauts to Earth-moon L2, a spot in space beyond the moon's far side. EML-2 is a so-called libration point where the gravitational pulls of the moon and Earth roughly balance out, allowing spacecraft to essentially park there. [Visions of Deep-Space Stations (Gallery)]

Astronauts would ride to EML-2 aboard NASA's Orion capsule, which is being built by Lockheed Martin. Orion would get off the ground atop the Space Launch System(SLS), the agency's huge new deep-space rocket.

The launcher's first unmanned test flight is slated for 2017, and NASA hopes the SLS-Orion combo will begin carrying crews by 2021.

EML-2 is an interesting target in its own right, Hopkins said. From there, astronauts could teleoperate rovers on the far side with relative ease, helping explore a part of the moon that remains little-studied to date.

Such rovers could gather samples for a possible return to Earth, he said, which could shed light on the moon's mysterious impact history.

The robots could also deploy huge antennas, helping set up a powerful instrument that would take advantage of the radio "quiet zone" found on the lunar far side to investigate some of the universe's deepest mysteries.

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NASA Outpost Beyond Moon Could Lead to Mars