News & Announcements
Support the Mars Society while getting your last minute holiday shopping done. Amazon will donate 0.5% of the price of eligible AmazonSmile purchases to the Mars Society. To learn more, visit: https://amzn.to/2YVaZir. Thanks and happy holidays!… READ MORE >
A unique team of educators, designated as Crew 217, completed its one-week crew simulation yesterday at the Mars Society’s Utah-based Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS), the largest and longest-running Mars analog facility in the world. Funded by the Utah NASA Space Grant Consortium, the NASA Spaceward Bound Utah program serves as a workshop for K-12 teachers to conduct field science under astronaut simulation conditions. This inaugural crew consisted of middle school teachers from Utah, Colorado and Connecticut and was led… READ MORE >
Donate to the Mars Society on #GivingTuesday Each year on Giving Tuesday, non-profit organizations rally their supporters for a day of maximum impact. Following Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday provides an opportunity for people around the world to support what matters most to them and share that cause with their social media networks. The Mars Society relies on the generous contributions of members and friends like you to sustain and expand our programs, including the long-running Mars Desert Research Station in Utah,… READ MORE >
Hi space fans! We invite you to ask Mars Society President Dr. Robert Zubrin questions about Mars and space exploration. The event will take place in its own dedicated thread this Saturday! What: AMA (Ask Me Anything) with Dr. Zubrin Where: reddit, r/SpaceX, u/DrRobertZubrin When: Saturday, November 23, 2019 at 12:00 pm PT (20:00 UTC) Why: Let’s go to Mars! For details, visit: https://bit.ly/35jRIsX. Thank you!… READ MORE >
Presentations are now online for all ten finalists in this year’s inaugural Mars Colony Design Contest, an international competition to design a thousand-person permanent settlement on Mars. The presentations were given during the recent International Mars Society Convention in Los Angeles on October 19, 2019. Several entries, including these ten, will be included in a special print book that the Mars Society is working to publish by late this year. Dr. Robert Zubrin, Mars Society President, announced that we will… READ MORE >
We’re looking for Mission Support (CapCom) staff who are willing to volunteer remotely, giving their time and commitment to assist crews participating in analog missions at the Mars Society’s Mars Desert Research Station in Utah. Apart from the personal reward you will gain from having helped to contribute to space exploration and humanity’s great future achievement of reaching the Red Planet, additional benefits include: * Scholarships for future involvement in a MDRS crew. * Free signed copies of Dr Zubrin’s… READ MORE >
ATTENTION EDUCATORS! NASA Funded Opportunity for Teachers in Utah: Spaceward Bound Utah crew to be held at MDRS (Dec. 9-13, 2019) Spaceward Bound is a program to train K-12 teachers 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 scientists and researchers at NASA Ames, today researchers involved in that early project… READ MORE >
By Elizabeth Howell, Space.com, 11.06.19 WASHINGTON — Both SpaceX and NASA have ideas about how to get humans to the Red Planet, but the founder of the Mars Society says there’s a better way to do it. In a colorful talk here at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) on Oct. 23, Robert Zubrin made the case for his long-standing “Mars Direct” plan. Mars Direct, Zubrin argued, makes more sense than SpaceX’s current Starship architecture and the plans of NASA, which may use… READ MORE >
The Mars Society has awarded prizes to the top five winners in this year’s inaugural Mars Colony Design Contest, an international competition to design a thousand-person permanent settlement on Mars. Held during the recent 2019 Mars Society Convention in Los Angeles, the first place prize of $10,000 was awarded to the Star City team from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a rendering of which you can see to the right. “We were blown away by the quality of the one… READ MORE >
Mars Society UK invites you to join us next week at the European Mars Conference 2019 in England. The three-day science event will take place from Monday, 4th November to Wednesday, 6th November at the Institute of Physics in London. As the pre-eminent forum on Mars, the theme of this year’s European Mars Conference will be ‘Arrive, Survive and Thrive.’ Leading industry figures, thinkers, academics and engineers will be presenting their work, as well as their proposed paths to the planet Mars. … READ MORE >
The Mars Society’s Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) program, led by Dr. Shannon Rupert, is pleased to welcome our new crews to the Utah campus for the 2019-20 field season. During the course of the year, these dedicated crew members will be participating in important Mars analog research to help prepare human explorers for the challenges of visiting the Red Planet in the not too distant future. The following is the MDRS program itinerary for the coming year: Crew 214… READ MORE >
The Mars Society, led by Dr. Robert Zubrin, would like to take a moment to thank everyone who came to the 22nd Annual International Mars Society Convention in Los Angeles last week. With 350 (+) people attending the convention’s daily sessions, as well as the 300 who came to our sold-out Saturday evening banquet, this year’s international conference was one of the most successful to date. In addition, we would like to express our appreciation to all of the speakers… READ MORE >
The Mars Society is pleased to announce that the dates for the Space Exploration Alliance’s 2020 Legislative Blitz in Washington, D.C. will be Sunday, February 23rd through Tuesday, February 25th. The SEA consists of leading U.S. space advocacy groups, including National Space Society, Explore Mars, Moon Society, Federation of Galaxy Explorers, National Society of Black Engineers, Buzz Aldrin’s Human Spaceflight Institute, Students for the Exploration & Development of Space and the Mars Society. Established in 2004, the annual SEA Legislative… READ MORE >
The final convention schedule is now available online. For more details about the 2019 International Mars Society Convention, including registration for the four-day conference (October 17-20) and evening banquet, visit our convention information page…. READ MORE >
The 22nd Annual International Mars Society Convention, scheduled for October 17-20 at the University of Southern California, will be broadcast via live webcast. This will include all major plenary talks, panel discussions and public debates over the course of the four-day conference in Los Angeles. Those unable to attend the international forum are kindly invited to watch any and all sessions at: http://webcast.marssociety.org. To view the conference’s program itinerary, please click here. For additional details about the Mars Society convention,… READ MORE >
The Mars Society is pleased to announce that Rick Tumlinson, Founding Partner of Space Fund and Founder of Earth Light Foundation, Space Frontier Foundation and the New World Institute, will address the 22nd Annual International Mars Society Convention on Thursday, October 17th at 7:30 pm at the University of Southern California (in Los Angeles). Mr. Tumlinson’s talk – “Reality Check – Taking the Fiction Out of the Space Frontier” – will take a hard core look at some of the… READ MORE >
The Mars Society announced the convening of a special panel discussion entitled “Opportunities for Space Entrepreneurs” on Friday, October 18th at 11:30 am during its 22nd Annual International Mars Society Convention in Los Angeles with the goal of helping attendees start their own companies focused on technologies with dual applications for Mars and Earth. The panel will be introduced by Dr. Alex MacDonald, NASA’s new Chief Economist, and facilitated by James Burk, Senior Manager of Artic Consulting and founding member… READ MORE >
SpaceX’s Paul Wooster to Speak at Mars Society Convention Banquet The Mars Society is very pleased to announce that this year’s Saturday evening banquet at the 22nd Annual International Mars Society Convention at USC in Los Angeles will include a talk by senior SpaceX representative Paul Wooster, providing an update about the company and its ongoing efforts to revolutionize space flight technology with the goal of enabling humanity to settle the solar system. Mr. Wooster currently serves as Principal Mars… READ MORE >
The full itinerary for the 22nd Annual International Mars Society Convention is now available for viewing online. Please visit https://bit.ly/2kPIDqa to see the four-day conference schedule, running from October 17-20 at the University of Southern California (Los Angeles). The Mars Society convention program includes a series of plenary talks, panel discussions and public debates on important issues related to planning for a human mission to the Red Planet and general space exploration. Conference highlights will include an update about NASA’s… READ MORE >
The Mars Society is pleased to announce that Nova Spivack, a world-renowned futurist and Chairman & Co-Founder of the Arch Mission Foundation, will give a plenary talk about his foundation’s efforts to preserve humanity’s knowledge and our planet’s biology through the establishment of off-world archives at the 22nd Annual International Mars Society Convention, set for October 17-20 at USC in Los Angeles. Mr. Spivack’s plenary talk will occur during the conference’s opening session on the morning of October 17th. The Arch Mission… READ MORE >
The Mars Society is pleased to announce that Dr. Ashwin R. Vasavada, JPL Project Scientist for NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), also known as the Curiosity rover, will give a plenary talk about MSL’s current operations on the Red Planet during the 22nd Annual International Mars Society Convention (October 17-20) at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Dr. Vasavada has been the lead scientist for the MSL mission since 2015, having served prior to that as deputy project… READ MORE >
By Robert Zubrin, National Review, 08.31.19 On April 11, 2019, the Israeli SpaceIL company’s Beresheet (Hebrew for “In the Beginning”) lunar lander crashed on the Moon. Beresheet’s payload, supplied by the non-profit Arch Mission Foundation, was meant to be an informational backup for the Earth. It included a DVD containing 30 million pages of human knowledge, as well as 60,000 etched pages requiring no computer to read, keys to 5,000 languages, and DNA samples from 25 people. According to Arch Mission Foundation chairman… READ MORE >
We are glad to announce the establishment of Mars Society South Asia (MSSA), the official chapter of The Mars Society for countries in southern Asia. MSSA will serve as a non-profit space advocacy organization dedicated to the human exploration and settlement of the planet Mars. The new group will also act as the main authority for organizing the Indian Rover Challenge (IRC), part of the Mars Society’s Rover Challenge Series (RCS). MSSA teams comprise of alumni of more than 15… READ MORE >
Those interested in serving as a crew member at the Mars Society’s Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS), the largest and longest-running Mars simulation program in the world, located in southern Utah, can now apply for the 2020-21 field season, which runs from October 2020 thru May 2021. The MDRS Crew Application Form and the MDRS Application Instructions & Information are available on the Mars Society / MDRS web site, located at: http://mdrs.marssociety.org/apply-to-field-season, for downloading. Individuals can apply for the MDRS simulation, as… READ MORE >