WASHINGTON While NASA wrestles with out-of-control costs and program management woes embedded within the International Space Station (ISS) project, behind-the-scenes efforts are underway to shape long-range space goals.

One such endeavor involves NASA, industry, and Russian space engineers hammering out a humans-to-Mars mission, backed by funding from the U.S. Department of State.

With little fanfare, American, Russian, and European study teams have begun to sketch out the space infrastructure needed to sustain human exploration around Earth, as well as support outbound traffic to other destinations, including Mars.

The completed ISTC Project 1172 has led to Project 2120.

The follow-on study takes a broader and more aggressive look at the types of space infrastructure needed to support multiple human exploration goals.

"One of the reasons that we like to use the ISTC for this kind of cooperative program is that the major partners all participate on an equal basis. Youve got the U.S., Russia, Europeans and the Japanese, and the potential for all of those space agencies to be involved in a project," said Anne Harrington, Acting Director of the Office of Proliferation Threat Reduction at the U.S. Department of State.

"The mission to Mars is an exciting concept and one that I think is particularly appropriate to this kind of international consortium, which is how weve operated on many of these types of programs before," Harrington told SPACE.com. The White House has embraced ISTC work, with an eye toward expanding the program, she added.

"Obviously, NASA has a very robust set of scientific exchanges with the Russians. They work very closely with us on any of the space-related projects we fund," Harrington said. "We dont go out in front of NASA in terms of picking projects and selecting directions that are not consistent with where were going as a government, obviously," she said.

Harrington said ISTC offers fairly unique aspects to the way the United States can work with the Russians and other countries.

"Im not sure how much closer we are to Mars, but certainly by providing a platform that allows these groups to work together it may bring us at least a little bit closeror at least closer faster," Harrington said.

U.S. industry player in ISTC space work is Boeing.

"The biggest advantage of ISTC is that it lets us maintain access to some of the best capabilities from human exploration that exists on the planet," said Andrew Aldrin, senior manager for strategy and policy for Boeings Human Space Flight and Exploration group in Huntington Beach, California.

"What were interested in doing is making sure that Russian space capabilities remain in place. So when globally we do have the money to go to Mars or do whatever is the next great human exploration venture...that the Russians are still there," Aldrin said.

There is no doubt the Russians are ready to rumble when it comes to rocketing humans to Mars.

As example, in early July, one Russian space group tossed on the table a proposal to dispatch a six-person team to the Red Planet by the year 2015. Price tag for the 440-day trip: $20 billion according to their estimates.

Although NASA chief Sean OKeefe is preoccupied with the ongoing space station problems, he has tentatively dipped his toe into human exploration waters.

Speaking in April at Syracuse Universitys Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs, OKeefe kicked off a modest word campaign, arguably construed as the philosophical preamble for pushing humans beyond low Earth orbit.

To pioneer the future, OKeefe called upon agency workers to "build an integrated strategy that links human space flight and robotic space flight in a stepping stone approach to exploration and discovery."

NASAs tomorrowland vision is based on a three-step mandate: "To improve life here, to extend life to there, and to find life beyond."

That's nicely packaged rhetoric, but not too much in the way of detail.

However, OKeefe has underscored the fact that NASA must do things differently in the future. Conventional rocketry and fuels simply arent practical in any reach further out into the cosmos.

"Thats why we are launching an initiative to explore the use of nuclear propulsion," OKeefe said. "One of the major obstacles of deep space travel is finding fast and efficient ways to get aroundto get to anywhere," he said.