THE BASALT (BIOLOGIC ANALOG SCIENCE ASSOCIATED WITH LAVA TERRAINS) PROGRAM WILL INVESTIGATE TERRESTRIAL VOLCANIC TERRAINS AND THEIR HABITABILITY AS ANALOG ENVIRONMENTS FOR EARLY AND PRESENT-DAY MARS. WE WILL CONDUCT OUR SCIENTIFIC FIELDWORK UNDER SIMULATED MARS MISSION CONSTRAINTS TO EVALUATE STRATEGICALLY SELECTED CONCEPTS OF OPERATIONS (CONOPS) AND CAPABILITIES WITH RESPECT TO THEIR ANTICIPATED VALUE FOR THE JOINT HUMAN AND ROBOTIC EXPLORATION OF MARS. BASALT OFFERS FIDELITY TO PSTAR IN THE AREAS OF SCIENCE, SCIENCE OPERATIONS, AND TECHNOLOGY. PROGRAMMATICALLY, WE DIRECTLY ADDRESS THE NASA INTERESTS BY ENABLING INTEGRATED INTERDISCIPLINARY FIELD EXPERIMENTS FOCUSED ON EXPLORING RELEVANT ENVIRONMENTS ON EARTH AS AN INTEGRAL PART OF PREPARATION FOR FUTURE HUMAN MISSIONS TO MARS. SPECIFICALLY, OUR SCIENCE-DRIVEN EXPLORATION PROGRAM IS EXPECTED TO RESULT IN NEW SCIENTIFIC, OPERATIONAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL CAPABILITIES THAT WILL SERVE TO ENABLE AND INFORM THE NEXT GENERATION OF HUMANROBOTIC PLANETARY EXPLORATION.