Mars won't see landings of humans very soon.

It just doesn't make sense to put humans on Mars.  In orbit around it, sure, but not on the planet.  Building a second space station that orbits mars would be brilliant and in time make fabrication possible, and certainly ease the challenge of bringing materials and machines to Mars.  Machines can already do pretty much everything we need under the control of an orbiting crew.  Mining, chemical analysis, surveying, shooting chemicals or seeds at the planet, all that.  Unless and until we can green Mars there's nothing there for a wetware human to do or eat or breathe or live on.  He'd be confined every bit as much to a base camp as the space station and as unlikely to drive out into the wilderness of the planet or explore.  We no longer need to drop humans like that and there still is no way for the human there to then fuel a vehicle to return.  If we focused on robots, they could find the prizes in martian soil for us, and when fuel was refined, the first ship could go down, for instance.  Or they could build the safe habitat bubbles and residences for the humans.  All that could be dropped from an orbiting station.
Even the fuel cost of slowing the craft for descent and landing it safely on the surface without damaging delicate human cargo is said to be too great.  It took so much velocity to get from earth to mars that it must then slow itself an equal amount with equal amount of fuel again.  This is why they didn't orbit pluto, too hard to stop that thing once it's going.
Putting a craft in orbit around mars is far easier.  It's got the mass to offset the velocity, and you can get into a slingshot orbit more readily around it.