FROM P1 Mr Berry said that the US was "looking forward to the -mission to Mars and was -looking to do that arm in arm with Australia". 
A spokesman for the Federal Government confirmed that the US and Australia were currently working on space plans, which included tests that would be used in "future human spaceflights to the moon and on the journey to Mars".
In just two years, Australia will help NASA test a spacecraft that it is hoped will, in a generation, send tourists from the moon to Mars.
"The Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex (CDSCC), managed by CSIRO on behalf of NASA JPL, has been slated to provide tracking and communications for NASA's human spaceflight program," the Federal Government spokesman said.
"This would include any -potential Mars mission around the 2030 time frame. "So, yes, Australia, and in particular CSIRO at Tidbinbilla, where CDSCC is located, will help with a potential Mars mission as part of its normal services to NASA.
"The Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex is already scheduled to support, in   September 2018, NASA's EM-1 mission which will test the Orion spacecraft that will be used in future human spaceflights to the moon and on the journey to Mars.
"This mission will place the uncrewed spacecraft on a -remotely controlled journey to the moon and back. Orion will make its first human-crewed flight in the early 2020s and by the mid-2030s, as part of NASA's current plans, take the first humans to Mars.
"Any further assistance to the mission will be considered by the Australian Government," the spokesman said.
In 2010, President Obama said: "Early in the next decade, a set of crewed flights will test and prove the systems required for exploration beyond low Earth orbit."By 2025, we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first-ever crewed missions beyond the moon into deep space," he said.