All,

The 9th Annual International Mars Society Conference will be held August
3-6 at the L'Enfant Plaza Hotel in Washington, DC. This year's event
will be amazing one, featuring many prominent speakers such as NASA
Administrator Mike Griffin and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, as well as more
details on the unprecedented 4-month analog Mars mission the Mars
Society will be conducting at FMARS in 2007 (see the press release
below for more information on this recent announcement).

Conference attendees can stay at L'Enfant Plaza Hotel, just steps from
the National Air and Space Museum in the heart of the nation's capital,
for the discounted rate of $137 (an absolutely amazing price for such a
great location during the peak of tourist season). However, to get
this great rate, reservations must be made by July 13.

For more details on the conference and how to make hotel reservations,
visit http://www.marssociety.org. If you have any additional
questions, don't hesitate to email me. With such an amazing conference
just a short drive from most of PA, I look forward to seeing many of you
in August!

Kevin Sloan

> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: [marssocietynewsletter] Mars Society to Launch 4-Month Mars
> Mission to the High Arctic
> From: "marssoc" <marssocinfo@...>
> Date: Mon, June 26, 2006 5:45 pm
> To: marssocietynewsletter@yahoogroups.com
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Mars Society to Launch 4-Month Mars Mission to the High Arctic
> Press Release
> For immediate release, June 26, 2006
> For further information contact the Mars Society at
> info@..., or visit our website at www.marssociety.org
>
> By a vote of 21 to 0, with 11 abstentions, the Mars Society Steering
> Committee has voted to undertake a four-month long simulated human
> Mars exploration mission to the high Arctic in 2007.
>
> The mission will consist of a single 7 person crew, which will
> journey to the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS) on
> Canada's Devon Island, 900 miles from the North Pole, in early May
> 2007, and remain on site through the end of August 2007.
>
> During these four months, the crew will conduct a sustained program
> of field exploration in geology, microbiology, and paleontology, just
> as an actual team of explorers would on the Red Planet, while
> operating under many Mars mission constraints.
>
> For example, no one will be able to go outside without wearing
> spacesuit simulators, which will restrict their mobility, agility,
> and situational awareness, and force them to communicate with each
> other strictly by radio. The isolated team of 7 will have to do all
> their own field work, lab work, repair of equipment, reportage,
> chores of daily life, and get along, and thereby be forced to deal
> with an array of problems that the first human explorers will
> eventually face on Mars. By doing so, the Mars Society will gain
> invaluable knowledge needed to plan the first human expeditions to
> the Red Planet.
>
> While on the island, the crew will communicate daily through a
> satellite link to Mission Support Group located in the continental
> United States. The Mission Support Group will include a Remote
> Science Team, to guide the crew's exploration efforts, and an
> Engineering Team to assist them in dealing with engineering problems.
> The long-distance interaction of the crew with the Mission Support
> Group will also be the subject of research, as the development of an
> effective art of telescience is essential to maximizing the
> effectiveness of human explorers on Mars.
>
> Participation in the crew, the Mission Support Group, the Remote
> Science Team, and the Engineering Team will be open to volunteers
> from around the world. A formal call for volunteers, as well as an
> extensive discussion of the plan for the mission, will be presented
> at the 9th International Mars Society Convention, which will be held
> August 3-6, 2006 at the L'Enfant Plaza Hotel, Washington DC.
> Registration for the convention is now open at www.marssociety.org.
>
> Preliminary plans for the mission call for the following. First, ATVs
> and other advance supplies will be brought in on ski-equipped Twin
> Otters during April, when the snow on the Devon Island landing strip
> is thick. In May, the snow is to think to make a ski-plane landing
> safe, so the crew will cross the ice between Resolute Bay and Devon
> on skidoos. At the end of August, helicopters are available, and will
> be used to pull the crew out.
>
> In order to make the funds available to enable the 4-month mission in
> 2007, the Steering Committee decided to cancel the 1-month FMARS
> field season previously planned for 2006. As the Mars Society has
> already successfully performed four 1-month crew rotations at FMARS,
> another was deemed unnecessary. Additional funds are, however,
> needed to obtain scientific equipment to maximize the return of the
> mission. Donations are welcome, and sponsorship opportunities will be
> available to companies, institutions, and individuals who wish to
> participate financially in support of this historic adventure.
>
> Commenting on the Steering Committee's bold decision to launch the
> mission, Mars Society president Dr. Robert Zubrin said; "This is the
> right thing to do, at the right time. The 4-month FMARS mission
> represents a powerful extension of our analog research program to
> date. The four-month duration will exceed that of any other space
> agency isolation studies, but, more importantly, will involve a crew
> that is actively being tasked to conduct a sustained program of field
> exploration under Mars-like constraints in an extreme environment the
> whole time. No one else has ever done anything like it. This is going
> to be breakthrough research."
>
> For further information about the Mars Society, visit our website at
> www.marssociety.org.
>
>