The space shuttle Endeavor’s three-day road trip last month to join sister ships Discovery and Atlantis on display in a Los Angeles museum was not a funeral procession for space exploration. Rather, it was more like the end of one chapter leading to the next, in which Hawaii will play a big role in sending humans into the solar system and even landing on Mars.

The state has invested $2.34 million in the Pacific International Space Center for Exploration Systems (PISCES) to develop and expand a project to test space vehicles in preparation for missions to Mars or the moon.

Rob Kelso, the program’s new director, says the assessment will take about a year and construction about three years, with eyes toward the Hilo area.

PISCES was begun five years ago at the University of Hawaii at Hilo and was shifted this year to the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.

"Our goal is to become the preferred provider for space agencies and commercial space businesses around the world that are developing technologies to help enable and sustain planetary surface exploration," said Kelso, a former NASA space shuttle flight director at Johnson Space Center in Texas.

He noted that the Hawaii island landscape is ideal for some aspects of research because of terrain that is like the basaltic makeup of Mars in many ways, including a strikingly similar chemical composition.

Meanwhile, NASA is going ahead with its Mars Exploration Program in response to President Barack Obama’s challenge to send humans to that planet in the 2030s.

PISCES plans to offer research to NASA, along with the aerospace industry and "new space" companies.

In September, the Federal Aviation Administration awarded a matching grant of $250,000 to DBEDT to help search for the best site in Hawaii for a commercial spaceport and to study the environmental effects of launching and landing commercial spacecraft from Hawaii airports.

The two advances go hand in hand, as space tourism nears reality. More than 450 people have bought tickets to fly into space aboard British billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic in little more than a year from now, from a recently completed spaceport in a New Mexico desert.

The environmental assessment in Hawaii will review existing infrastructure at airports including Hono-lulu Airport and those at Kona, Hilo and Kalaeloa. That study is expected to take up to 18 months to finish and be followed by a public review, at which point the state could apply to the FAA for a commercial spaceport license.

The FAA award and the investment in the research center on Hawaii island are important elements in Hawaii’s entry into what U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has predicted will be "a safe and robust commercial space industry in the United States."

It also will be a welcome takeoff of Hawaii’s tourism industry of the future.