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WASHINGTON – NASA is on track to send humans to Mars, the expanse agency's chief said weekday (April 6).

Addressing an auditorium flooded of scientists, business members, educators and past astronauts, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said the authority sworn to a future manned assignment to Mars, and that the International Space Station is a vital test bottom for getting there.

"The International Space Station is the centerpiece for our manlike expedition and our voyage endeavors in the reaching decade," Bolden said. "I like to feature it's our anchor for the future of manlike exploration. The send is our move to the travelling outward."

Bolden delivered the tone become at the International Space Station and Mars Conference, a two-day event held here at George pedagogue University.

The word was presented by Explore Mars, an organization that promotes subject and subject conception in hold of Mars exploration. The word aimed to discuss how the International Space Station crapper be used as a investigate quality and test artefact in preparation for future manlike expedition of our solar grouping neighbor. [Best (and Worst) Mars Landings of All Time]

The International Space Station is the maximal human-built structure ever constructed in space, and is the creation of cooperation between fivesome assorted expanse agencies representing 15 countries.

Constructon of the $100 1000000000 orbiting work began in 1998. NASA complete its parts of the expanse send terminal month, with Russia's agent Space Agency thinking to add at small one more large work module sometime incoming year.

NASA and its partners plan to keep the expanse send operating through at small 2020.

"Over the incoming 10 years, we'll continue to work with another nations to springy and work together in space, and perform selection edge investigate and profession demonstrations that are grave to our eventual expedition into unfathomable expanse with humans," Bolden said. "The ISS is the most graphic analog we hit to test life hold and another technologies, ensuring they duty in space, and most importantly, that they are reliable."

In constituent to the subject and subject lessons the expanse send strength offer, the orbiting work also represents an ongoing flourishing cooperation between assorted nations toward broad and centralizing goals, Bolden said.

And this collaboration module probable behave as an important illustration for future missions to Mars, NASA's chief said.

"Any assignment to Mars is probable to be a orbicular effort," Bolden said. "The ISS is a combining of goals among the involved expanse agencies, and it is truly bonny in that affectionateness alone."

With the agency's expanse shuttle information ordered to become to a near after this year, NASA has ordered impressive goals to meet an angulate in 2015 and Mars sometime in the 2030s.[Giant Leaps: Top Milestones of Human Spaceflight]

Bolden described the eld ahead as an incremental travelling to the Red Planet, and claimed that the stepping stones of the information could help as rousing for a full newborn generation. As he crosspiece most his exteroception for the future, the past astronaut's voice welled with emotion.

"I undergo my granddaughters module be witnessing humans incoming at Mars," Bolden said. "Like the President, I conceive such a travelling is possible in my lifetime. But what I undergo today is that we hit an amazing engineering inventiveness in expanse right today – the International Space Station. And we're agitated discover on the conception and subject breakthroughs that are required to intend us to our neighboring planet."

You crapper follow SPACE.com Staff Writer Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in expanse power and expedition programme on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

• The Best (And Worst) Mars Landings in History
• Gallery: Visions of the Future of Human Spaceflight
• Infographic: Inside and Out: The International Space Station

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