This is not really true either. Orion can in no way shape or form get anyone to Mars. Maybe a modified Orion will be used as part of a plan to take humans to Mars but it is not capable of that on its own.
Yep, the Mars line is sales. NASA has been aiming for the moon as a more realistic possibility with this thing, which is why they rebuilt Apollo with modern rockets.
"Orion, which could one day take astronauts to Mars..." [1]
"NASA just tested Orion — a spacecraft that might someday carry people to Mars" [2]
"NASA and its commercial partners are designing Orion to take astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid in the 2020s, and to Mars and its moons in the 2030s" [3]
"Orion will facilitate human exploration of the Moon, asteroids, and Mars." [4]
"This time, the rocket was unnamed, but the craft is designed eventually to carry humans to Mars" [5]
You are repeating news sources that are repeating press releases.
The Orion has less than 214 square feet of room. This isn't enough for 4 people to live in for 6 months.
NASA says it's for Mars because it gets people excited. But Congress has not instructed them to do a mission to Mars, and Congress is in charge, for better or for worse. There is no mission to Mars.
I would expect a Mars mission to be coupled to a living space during transit. Bigelow's inflatable modules might be a good fit, and they're testing one soon on the ISS.
Orion was originally designed for extended lunar missions. There were studies that envisioned it as a component of asteroid missions. Probably there are studies applying it to Mars, but I'm not aware of those.
