The Mars Society is pleased to announce that Dr. Sara Seager, a prominent astronomer and planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will give a virtual update about efforts to search for bio-signatures in the atmosphere of the planet Venus during the 24th Annual International Mars Society Convention, scheduled for October 14-17, 2021. Serving as the Class of 1941 Professor of Physics & Planet Science and Professor of Aeronautics & Astronautics at MIT, Dr. Seager, along with other researchers at MIT, Cardiff… READ MORE >
News & Announcements
We are pleased to introduce our new Red Planet Live video podcast – a raw, off the cuff look into all things Mars. We will talk with planetary scientists, STEM industry experts, members of academia, and space advocates who all have a deep passion for the Red Planet. Ron Craig will host the show on behalf of the Mars Society, and will lead and moderate tantalizing discussions with our guests every month as we dig into the questions and work being… READ MORE >
The Mars Society is pleased to announce that Dr. Henrik Hargitai, a planetary geologist and mapping expert at NASA’s Ames Research Center, will give a virtual presentation about mapping the Red Planet at the 24th Annual International Mars Society Convention, set for October 14-17, 2021. Dr. Hargitai is involved in a post-doctoral fellow at the NASA’s Ames Research Center and the NASA Astrobiology Institute, focusing on planetary cartography, fluvial geomorphology and the history and localization of planetary nomenclature. Earlier this… READ MORE >
By Evan Plant-Weir, Senior Writer, Red Planet Bound Blog Space exploration is not just about gathering data. By and large, the last few hundred days on Earth are not going to be remembered fondly. Few will recall the COVID-19 years with a sense of happy nostalgia. Ultimately, however, this time won’t be entirely defined by the beating we took at the hands of a pandemic. Despite the many tragedies and challenges therein, we still managed to pull off some pretty… READ MORE >
The Mars Society is pleased to announce that there are three volunteer internship opportunities available for the upcoming 2021-22 field season at the Mars Desert Research Station in southern Utah. Two are student positions which require a minimum month-long commitment on-site, and should be done in collaboration with the student’s academic institution as part of an independent study program. The first opportunity is designed for biology majors and requires the student to be on-site in December 2021 to do field… READ MORE >
Barbara Belvisi, CEO & founder of Interstellar Lab, Inc., will give a virtual plenary address about her company and its mission at the 24th Annual International Mars Society Convention, scheduled for October 14-17, 2021. Established in 2018 and located in Los Angeles and Paris, Interstellar Lab develops bio-regenerative modules and life-support solutions to make human life sustainable on Earth, Mars and throughout the solar system. Ms. Belvisi started her career as an investment manager in a FoF management company, then… READ MORE >
By Dr. Robert Zubrin, Nautilus, 05.12.21 In the late afternoon of May 5, SpaceX’s Elon Musk tweeted, “Starship landing nominal!” Musk is not known for understatement. But seeing that stainless steel behemoth soar was, for many, something more like phenomenal. Over 5 million people watched the spectacle on YouTube, perhaps many with bated breath, as every prior attempt at landing Starship had gone up in flames. Not SN15. This Starship, after having climbed 12 kilometers and then coasted down in a “belly… READ MORE >
Crew 235, Mars Desert Research Station The following is the final summary report of Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) Crew 235. At the start of our mission, nine strangers came together with different hopes and expectations, all with the same end goal – come together with other like-minded individuals within the education community and emerge with new skills or ideas. Amazingly, every step of our journey together built the outcome that would meet and exceed everyone’s expectations. Many of the crew interactions… READ MORE >
Dr. Chris McKay, a senior planetary scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center and one of the co-founders of the Mars Underground, will virtually address the 24th Annual International Mars Society Convention, scheduled for October 14-17, 2021, about the concept of terraforming the planet Mars. A renowned astrobiologist and expert on planetary atmospheres and terraforming, Dr. McKay’s research focuses primarily on the evolution of the solar system and the origins of life. He is also involved in planning future Mars missions, including human… READ MORE >
For over a year, the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) has been nearly as quiet as Mars itself. Normally MDRS is a revolving door for teams of scientists, engineers, physicians, journalists, etc. to research, record, and reflect at one of the leading Martian simulations in the world. MDRS prides itself in being safety first and administration took quick and appropriate action to protect its simulation participants and staff from what the world soon came to know as a global health… READ MORE >
The Mars Society is pleased to announce that Dr. Michael Hecht, Principal Investigator for NASA Perseverance’s MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment) instrument, will give a virtual address about the project to the 24th Annual International Mars Society Convention, scheduled for October 14-17, 2021. As part of the growing list of “firsts” for NASA’s Perseverance rover on the surface of Mars, MOXIE successfully converted air from the Red Planet’s thin, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere into oxygen in April, laying the… READ MORE >
The Mars Society is proud to announce that its book, “Mars City States: New Societies for a New World”, has now been published. The book, edited by Frank Crossman, contains the twenty top designs for a one million person Mars City State, is now on sale in both paperback and kindle formats. People will soon be able to go to the Red Planet. But that very possibility opens a still more interesting – indeed truly grand – question: What will we… READ MORE >
Support Mars Advocacy & Show Us Your Creativity The Mars Society, the world’s largest space advocacy group dedicated to the human exploration and settlement of the Red Planet, invites members, friends, students, space advocates, and the general public to submit a creative poster for consideration as part of its annual design competition. As always, the winning poster design will be used as the primary promotional graphic for the organization’s main event of the year – the 24th Annual International Mars… READ MORE >
By Evan Plant-Weir The scope and scale of Mars settlement is so significant that it can defy our intuitions. Generally speaking, thinking about endeavours on this scale does not come naturally to us. Especially for those that are new to the idea, it can feel detached from practical reality. The trick to shrinking this unwieldy concept down into an accessible format, is found by thinking a little bigger. We have to consider it within the broader context of history. In… READ MORE >
By Dr. Robert Zubrin, SpaceNews, 04.07.21 The key is developing a 10-ton lander The triumphant landing of the Perseverance rover has inspired all Americans, and indeed much of the world. President Biden should follow it up by launching the program to send humans to Mars. While robotic rovers are wonderful, they cannot resolve the fundamental scientific questions that Mars poses to humanity, which relate to the potential prevalence and diversity of life in the universe. The early Mars was very much like… READ MORE >
Register Today! The 24th Annual International Mars Society Convention October 14-17, 2021 (A Virtual Event) The Mars Society was founded more than two decades ago to further the exploration and settlement of the Red Planet. The International Mars Society Convention presents a unique opportunity for those interested in the planet Mars to come together and discuss the science, technology, social implications, philosophy and a multitude of other aspects of Mars exploration. Last year, in the face of the COVID epidemic,… READ MORE >
By Dr. Robert Zubrin, Mars Society President, Scientific American, 03.25.21 The triumphant landing of the Perseverance rover has inspired all Americans, and indeed much of the world. President Biden should follow it up by launching a program to send humans to Mars. While robotic rovers are wonderful, they cannot resolve the fundamental scientific question that Mars poses to humanity, which relate to the potential prevalence and diversity of life in the universe. The early Mars was very much like the… READ MORE >
By Evan Plant-Weir For the past few weeks, an article has been circulating throughout the Mars science and exploration community that serves as a sharp reminder of how much work remains to be done in educating the public (and apparently journalists) on the subject of the red planet. ‘Mars Is a Hellhole’ seemingly aims to characterize the objective of a long term human presence on Mars as folly. By couching scary-sounding Mars factoids within a blatantly ad hominem swipe at… READ MORE >
The Mars Society’s MarsVR team are beginning a new Indiegogo Update series that will feature one of our partners each week for the duration of our Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign and beyond! The first partner to be mentioned in detail is Pyramid Games. It’s a game development studio currently working on an open-world Mars survival game: Occupy Mars. They have been hard at work on this project for a couple of years. Starting today, if you select our “Place a Name” pledge level for… READ MORE >
Greetings MarsVR Backers & Crowdexplorers! As part of the promotion of our ongoing MarsVR crowdfunding campaign, the Mars Society is releasing new 3-D models of its Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) in Utah that have been captured by our team as part of the MarsVR project. We are releasing the first new model, which is an annotated view of the entire MDRS campus exterior. This is now live on Sketchfab, a 3-D modelling site, and we plan to make it available… READ MORE >
Spaceward Bound Utah to be held at MDRS Analog Spaceward Bound is a NASA-funded program to train K-12 educators in how to engage their students in activities that will inspire careers in the space sciences by taking teachers into the field with scientists who are working on space-related research in a given location. First instituted by researchers at NASA Ames, today scientists involved in that early project are still organizing Spaceward Bound field expeditions around the world. Spaceward Bound Utah… READ MORE >
The MarsVR team has released their first Video Update for the Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign. In this video, James Burk (Director/IT, Mars Society) and Jeff Rainer (CEO MXTReality) talk about the goals for the project and answer some of the questions that have come in. We have passed four thousand dollars through the support of 46 backers who have pledged at one of the available donation levels. MarsVR will deliver a stunning experience to schools, museums, the public and our future… READ MORE >
By Evan Plant-Weir, Red Planet Bound Blog 02.24.21 Humanity has some unfinished business with the Moon. The lunar surface has fallen back into the realm of the remote and unfamiliar for too long. The Apollo landings kindled a dream of an expansive, space-faring future for our species, and that vision continues to inspire us nearly a half century later. Though we have sustained an ember of that dream through crewed missions to the International Space Station, it diminishes a little… READ MORE >
The Mars Society, the world’s largest space advocacy organization dedicated to the human exploration and settlement of the planet Mars, is pleased to announce its new Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign for our Mars Virtual Reality (MarsVR) project. Project Goals Our project will deliver a stunning Mars experience to schools, museums, the public and our future space explorers. The goals of the project are to create a high-quality virtual reality simulation of future human exploration of the Red Planet, as a tool… READ MORE >
The Mars Society will be hosting a virtual Facebook Watch Party for the upcoming landing of NASA’s Perseverance Rover on the surface of the planet Mars. Launched on June 30, 2020, “Percy” is scheduled to set down on February 18th inside the 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero Crater, where it will then begin its mission to explore the nearby area in search of signs of past and present life. We invite you to mark the arrival of the latest Mars rover by joining our live Facebook… READ MORE >