The American space agency NASA has decided to give the science community an opportunity to discuss potential landing sites for future crewed missions to Mars. The agency has called for proposals for locations where humans could land, live, and work on the Martian surface.

NASA during the Landing Site/Exploration Zone Workshop for Human Missions to the Surface of Mars will seek proposals from the science community to suggest locations where humans could land, live, and work on the Martian surface.

The workshop is scheduled to be held from October 27-30, 2015, at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, TX.

The potential locations, called as Exploration Zones (EZ), are a collection of Regions of Interest (ROIs) that are located within approximately 60 miles (100 km) of a centralized landing site, said agency.

It further told that the EZ needs to offer compelling science research possibilities while also provide resources that could prove beneficial for astronauts during their stay on Mars.

EZs might be used by NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate and Science Mission Directorate as a part of a multi-year process of determining where and how the agency might explore the Red Planet with astronauts.

The agency stated that robots such as Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey, as well future spacecraft, will be assigned tasks to provide additional images and data for better maps of EZs, and will also help gather valuable scientific data.

NASA hopes that engaging scientists, technologists, and experts in human exploration during the conference will enable humans to live on and explore Mars in the coming decades.