With plans to send humans in Mars in the 2030s, NASA is seeking help to determine where the astronauts should land.

NASA will be holding a conference – the Landing Site/Exploration Zone Workshop for Human Missions to the Surface of Mars – in Houston, October 27-30. It will be open to anyone with any scientific or other relevant expertise to discuss the best place to land humans on Mars for the first time.

At the four-day meeting, researchers will propose roughly 62-mile-wide (100 kilometers) “exploration zones” that they believe are of scientific interest and possess enough resources, such as subsurface water ice, to support human life.

“Potential ‘Exploration Zones’ will need to offer compelling science research while also providing resources that our astronauts can take advantage of during their pioneering of the Red Planet,” NASA explained in the invitation. “First explorers are expected to be limited to about 60 miles (100 km) of travel from their landing site due to life support and exploration technology requirements.”

Jim Green, head of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, spoke to reporters at a teleconference, saying he expects this to be a “hot debate.”

“(The meeting) will start exactly the conversation we need to be able to architect what a station on Mars would look like, and how [it] would operate,” Green said.

Dependent on what happens at the workshop, NASA could end up with a list of potential spots for a manned mission, exploring them first with robotic drones like the rover mission planned for 2020.

“As we explore the path to Mars, we gain new knowledge and capabilities that will make life better here on Earth, right now,” NASA wrote. “This preliminary work on potential landing sites will facilitate dialogue about this next giant leap in human experience.”