President Obama's new emphasis on eventual deep space missions, such as sending astronauts to an asteriod by 2025, may rejuvenate NASA's artificial gravity program. Living in weightlessness for extended periods has negative effects on the human body, but NASA cut its artificial gravity studies for budgetary reasons when the goal was returning to the Moon. That's a short trip between two gravity wells. Deep space missions will require weeks or months to complete, so having a centrifuge aboard that can simulate Earth gravity, for example, may be useful in keeping a crew in shape.
Getting to Mars, for example, will likely take months, at least in first generation Mars ships, and combating the overall weakening of the body will be critical. There would be no point in sending humans to Mars unless they were physically able to explore the surface upon arrival.
The possibility of having a centrifuge onboard a Mars ship also suggests the size of that ship. We should not imagine going to Mars in a capsule. That flight to an asteroid in 2025 in an Orion capsule is probably pushing the limits. Deep space ships, to be practical, will be assembled in space and have more in common with ISS than with Apollo command modules. NASA tends not to make that point, but it's nonetheless the truth.
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