Former President George W. Bush , and then a move on to Mars.

The space agency has been working toward setting up a lunar outpost by 2020. NASA scientists have been planning on using .

NASA spokesman Allard Beutel has told Computerworld that robotics will be any workstation or .

Carl Walz, director of advanced capabilities at NASA and a former astronaut, ha said that NASA scientists plan on positioning robots and robotic rovers on Mars before the first astronauts arrive.

That way, the robots will be ready to help their human counterparts on what will probably be NASA's most taxing mission yet. The robots also may be called on to create rocket fuel out of gases in the atmosphere, so the astronauts have the fuel they need to get home.