MDRS 2010 Field Season Moving Ahead

MDRS 2010 Field Season Moving Ahead
by Freya Jackson — last modified 2010-09-14 09:23
Plans for the 10th field season of the Mars Desert Research Station are moving ahead rapidly.

The 10th field season is now planned to run from December 4, 2010 through May 7, 2011. This year’s field season will be run by a leadership group consisting of:

John Barainca – Logistics

Brian Enke – Mission Support

Luis Saraiva – Science Program

Robert Zubrin – Crew Selection and Finance

Volunteers are sought to expand the mission support group. Those wishing to volunteer should contact Brian Enke at mars.sw.coord@gmail.com.

Volunteer slots are open for participation as a crew member in the MDRS. Crew members will be required to pay for their own transportation to Grand Junction, Colorado and pay a $1000 participation fee (reduced to $500 for students) to cover station expenses.  Volunteers should send their applications to mdrs2010@aol.com by September 30, 2010 in order to be considered. Both individual applications and group applications of up to an entire crew (6 people) will be considered.

Applications should include

your full name
full contact information (home/work address, telephone numbers, email address(es)
3 references from work or school environment
your resume
proposed projects for your rotation
a list of all crew rotations dates, that you would be available to participate in,
plus the crew position (engineer, biologist, geologist, journalist, etc) that you are seeking.
experience in leading expeditions/ teams if you wish to be considered for crew commander
any food allergies / being a vegetarian or vegan (because of the ongoing food-study)
research project(s) for your rotation, or even several rotations during the season (having a research project aimed at publishable results is definitely a leg up in getting selected)
To enhance your chance of finding a crew rotation it is very important that you list ALL slots that you could participate in.


Potential rotations are as follows:

Dec. 4 – 18    Mars Society selected crew members

Dec. 18 – Jan. 1    Mars Society selected crew members

Jan. 1 -15    Mars Society selected crew members

Jan 15 – 29    Romanian crew ROMARS

Jan 29 - Feb. 12    NASA Ames Space Academy Crew LAMBDA

Feb. 12 - 26     EuroGeoMars

Feb 26 - 12 March     DOMMEX & EuroGeoMars

March 12 – 26     Georgia Tech Crew

March 26- April 9    Mars Society selected crew members

April 9-23    JUMP_Catholic University of Louvain

April 23-May 7    Stoker led crew: DOMEX

Only the crew dates with ‘Mars Society selected crew members’, are currently fully open to any applicant. However openings can sometimes occur in other crews in the event that one of their members needs to drop out. So please list all slots for which you may be available.  [Note; The September 30 deadline supersedes the previously deadline, which was September 15. Please get your applications in by this deadline, as the active field season is now at hand.]

Included in the participation fee you pay to The Mars Society is:
 transportation from Grand Junction, Colorado, where every participant is expected to arrive no later than the Friday night before the start of the rotation. The return trip to Grand Junction, CO, will be on the Saturday evening at the end of the two week rotation. NOTE: Flying out should not be booked before Sunday morning after your rotation.
food during the rotation
water, heating, electricity
use of science and engineering and general equipment, science reagents etc, ATVs, HabCar
use of EVA suits / backpacks


Not included in the participation fee:
Costs of gasoline for the trip from Grand Junction to the Hab and the return trip from Hab to Grand Junction. (160 miles one way)
Costs of two hotel nights for the overnight stay on Friday night before your rotation and Saturday night after your rotation.
The Mars Society has an agreement for a competitive room rate in Grand Junction with the Sandman Best Western motel. Sharing of hotel rooms is recommended.
The Best Western room rate includes free breakfast and free wi-fi internet, plus an airport shuttle between GJT Walker Airfield and the Best Western.


For a list of what to bring in gear and clothes please read the crew briefing documents carefully.

Every crew is expected to participate in a number of season-long projects. At the moment that is the

1)       Ongoing food study in cooperation with JSC under supervision of Dr. Kim Binsted of the university of Hawaii. All food including snacks at the MDRS will be provided by The Mars Society.

Other season-long research projects might be added before the season starts in November.

Anyone applying for the position of crew engineer, a vitally important job for the station as a whole and your crew in particular, needs to have a varied background in many engineering / handyman duties, and needs to be willing to be trained on the systems of the station by the Engineering Team. You must follow instructions from Mission Support.

No modifications or additions to the facility will be conducted without prior approval
from Mission Support Engineering.

The Mars Quarterly Summer 2010 Issue Available

The Mars Quarterly Summer 2010 Issue Available
by Freya Jackson — last modified 2010-08-16 18:37
The Mars Society is excited to announce the release of the summer 2010 edition of The Mars Quarterly (TMQ). This edition includes articles by Kevin Sloan, Dr. Jonathan Clarke, Dr. Claudio Bruno of the ESA, and an interview with Dr. Carolyn Porco of the Cassini-Huygens project.

Although you must be a paid member of The Mars Society to enjoy the entire issue, a sample of the contents of the current issue is available to our newsletter readers by visiting this link.

If you are not already a paid member, we invite you to join today!

Look for the fall issue in early October!

(Note to paid members: if you have any difficulty downloading TMQ, please log in to the web site and then re-try. If you continue to have issues, please contact the web team for assistance.)

13th International Mars Society Convention a Success

13th International Mars Society Convention a Successby Susan Holden Martin, MBA — last modified 2010-08-12 21:04

The recently completed 13th International Mars Society Convention held in Dayton Ohio, August 5-8, was a wonderful success. Despite the worst economic conditions in decades, over 200 regular conference attendees, plus 150 youngsters, turned out to hear or give presentations and participate in debates on how we can move forward to get humans to Mars in our time.

The conference was opened the morning of Thursday, August 8, with a plenary talk by Mars Society President Dr. Robert Zubrin, who offered an assessment of the current crisis in the US space program, and how the outrage over the bizarre “flexible path to nowhere” offered by administration science advisor John Holdren has mobilized very significant political forces to demand something better. These now include a majority of the US Senate, which has recently passed an authorization bill initiating funding for the development of a heavy lift launch vehicle in defiance of the Holdren plan. Zubrin went on to detail how such a vehicle could be used to implement a Mars Direct mission strategy to enable a humans to Mars exploration program using current technology.Following Zubrin, the next plenary speaker was William Borucki, the Principal Investigator of the Kepler mission which is searching for Earth-sized planets around other stars.  Borucki thrilled the conference attendees by reporting that in its first 33 days of operation, the mission had identified hundreds of candidate signatures indicating potential Earth-sized planets orbiting stars within the constellation Cygnus. These signatures still need to be confirmed, and some will no doubt prove to be false positives, however the team is expected to have a great deal to report when it makes its official presentation of the first several months of observations at the AAAS Conference this winter.The next speaker was Dr. Geoff Landis, of the NASA Glenn Research Center, who gave a review of six years of operation of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers on Mars.And all that was just the first morning!  Over the following four days, more than 70 exciting talks were given.  A list of them can be found at: http://www.marssociety.org/portal/c/Conventions/2010-annual-convention/2010PlenaryandTrackSchedule.pdfAmong the high points of the conference was the plenary talk given on the afternoon of Friday, August 6, by former NASA Administrator Dr. Mike Griffin, who offered a devastating systematic critique of the Obama administration space policy. Another high point was the Friday morning panel discussion entitled “The Vasimr Drive: Silver Bullet or Hoax?”  (Vasimr is an acronym for Variable-Specific-Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket.)Both the Griffin talk and the Vasimr panel can be seen in video posted on the internet. The relevant links are:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOyrzUr57dEhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5xMUy86WxQVideo of additional talks will be posted soon.On Saturday morning, attendees heard two great talks by NASA’s Dr. Carol Stoker. In the first she detailed the great value that NASA and other researchers have obtained from the use of the Mars Society’s Mars Desert Research Station.  In her second talk, Dr. Stoker detailed data taken by the Phoenix Mars Lander that indicates that the north polar region of Mars may have environments capable of supporting microbial life.Another noteworthy event of the conference was the holding of a “Mars Camp”, which educated, entertained and inspired over 150 area youngsters with hands-on activities featuring: rockets, airplane flight simulators, and remote controlled Mars rovers.  A special hit with the youngest attendees was a Mars exploration coloring book prepared for the Mars Society by professional cartoonists from The Autumn Society. The Mars Society will make this wonderful resource available to the public shortly.Dr. Ian O'Neill, Space Science Producer for Discovery News, was Master of Ceremonies at the Saturday night banquet which was keynoted by Dr. Carolyn Porco.  Dr. Porco presented the astounding results of NASA’s Cassini mission to Saturn.  Following Dr. Porco’s talk, Dr. Zubrin took the podium and showed the attendees an article written in 1958 that reported on America’s plan to reach the Moon – by the year 2000. “That was as far in the future then as the year 2052 is to us,” Zubrin said. “Yet three years after that article was written we were on our way, and eight years after that we were there.  Things can change.  From a technical point of view, we are much closer today to being able to send humans to Mars than they were to being able to go to the Moon in 1958. We can make this happen.” He then asked for funds to help the Mars Society continue its efforts, and $11,000 was donated on the spot.On Sunday morning, attendees heard the presentation of the Oregon State University Rover team, whose very capable Mars Rover won the TASC University Rover Challenge contest organized by the Mars Society in the Utah desert this past June. Featuring six independently powered and steerable wheels, the Oregon State rover can match the extreme maneuverability and terrain capability that has helped make NASA’s MER rover mission a great success. Another contest is planned for next year.Attendees left the conference resolved to win the fight for heavy lift, and for a destination driven space program whose goal is to reach the Red Planet.  Additional coverage of this year's conference, including the inspirational speech given by young Hero Magnus, and the sonnet written by Doris Sutton, will be included in the fall issue of The Mars Quarterly.We thank the Ohio Chapter of The Mars Society for their dedication and hard work in the planning of this year's convention.Next year’s conference will be August 4-7, 2011 in Dallas, Texas.  Don’t miss it!