A group of astronauts may spend a year in orbit around the moon in the late 2020s as part of NASA's plan to send humans to Mars in the 2030s, agency officials said. Greg Williams, NASA's deputy associate administrator for policy and plans in the agency's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, spoke today at the Humans to Mars Summit in Washington D.C. and provided a detailed look at the first two phases of NASA's current plan to send humans to Mars. The agency recently announced that its Mars plan now includes building a "deep-space gateway" around the moon to serve as a testing ground for operations and technology that will be required for those Red Planet missions, Williams said. Eventually, the lunar presence would also serve as a launching point for the spacecraft that will carry humans to Mars, he added. The yearlong crewed mission around the moon in 2027 is one of the major future milestones of the current plan. Before that yearlong lunar mission, however, there