NASA might be ill-equipped to go to Mars in ways that are structural and financial.

According to the 300-page report released last week, titled "Pathways to Exploration: Rationales and Approaches for a U.S. Program of Human Space Exploration," put out by the National Research Council's (NRC) Committee on Human Spaceflight, a manned mission to Mars is the most distant and difficult foreseeable goal for astronauts, but it is still attainable within the foreseeable future, Space.com reported.

The NRC committee discovered that in order to even go to Mars, NASA has to fundamentally review its current budget, which views "capability-based exploration strategy," and perhaps it should be replaced by one that is more guided towards short-term and closer destinations, possibly the moon, Space.com reported.

NASA's current plans is pursuing a path to Mars that eliminates any return to the lunar surface. They wish to send astronauts to a redirected asteroid by 2025 and a crew to orbit Mars by the mid-2030s.

However, the report suggests that astronauts should go back to the moon, but that idea has been reportedly opposed by President Barack Obama. The Constellation program, which was backed by former President George W. Bush, was reportedly abolished by Obama. The reason why it was abolished was because there was not enough money going into the program.

NASA spokesman David Weaver said he is otherwise open and somewhat approves the report by stating that it is "consistent with the bipartisan plan agreed to by Congress and the administration in the NASA Authorization Act of 2010, and that we have been implementing it ever since."

Weaver went on to say that NASA has indeed made progress in areas that are needed to reach Mars, and in so doing, they will continue on their path in conjunction and collaboration with other related agencies and other nations. As of now, NASA has been partnering with companies such as SpaceX, which might perhaps be reducing long-term costs.

The report, however, does come up with three potential pathways to get to Mars, but two of the methods involve return trips to the moon. It involves building a lunar landing and habitat that could help develop technologies that could be later used on Mars missions.

But the third pathway involves using the Obama administration's Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) as a major step. The pathway is that NASA "would grab a small rock passing close to the Earth in its natural orbit then redirect it to a new orbit around the moon. Then the astronauts would visit the rock and take samples."