Comment by jjk166

Orion was never aiming for anywhere. It was always meant to be a flexible module that could be used for whatever some future plan would come up with. It was developed as part of the Crewed Expeditionary Vehicle program explicitly as a flexible platform. Orion block 1 was originally supposed to be a shuttle replacement for transit to the ISS. The constellation program under which Orion started to be built ostensibly had ambitions beyond just going to the moon, including missions to both Mars and Near Earth Asteroids, but those follow on targets were never really fleshed out. The SLS was created after constellation was cancelled with no clear mission defined; its intent to keep supplier contracts going was clearly stated at the time. Artemis was a program created to give the SLS destinations to go to, none of which are Mars.