Call to Join 2012 SEA Legislative Blitz on Capitol Hill

The Space Exploration Alliance (SEA), a partnership of America’s major space advocacy groups, including the Mars Society, with a combined membership of tens of thousands of people, will hold its annual Legislative Blitz in Washington, D.C. from February 26–28, 2012.

The planned two-day campaign on Capitol Hill will involve meetings with members of Congress to discuss current challenges facing the U.S. space program and future planning for space exploration.   Informational and training sessions will be held one day prior to the start of meetings in order to prepare participants.

The Mars Society is calling on its members to come to Washington, D.C. to help represent the organization during this important legislative blitz.  Let government officials hear your voice and understand the importance of and need for a humans-to-Mars mission in the coming decade!

If you are interested in joining other Mars Society members in Washington, D.C., please contact us for more details.


For further information about the Mars Society, visit our website at www.marssociety.org. Your donations are welcome.

Mars Society Announces Dates/City for 2012 International Convention

Mars Society Logo 200x188

Mars Society Logo 200x188December 10, 2011 by The Mars Society

The Mars Society is pleased to announce that it will be convening its 15th Annual International Mars Society Convention on August 3 – 5, 2012 in Pasadena, California.

The dates were selected to coincide with the anticipated landing on the Red Planet of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory rover, better known as Curiosity, sometime late in the night on August 5th.

More details about the next Mars Society convention, including the official itinerary, list of speakers and exact convention location will be made available in the near future.  Thank you, and we hope you’ll be able to join us this August!

On to Mars (with a stop-over in Pasadena)!

Mars Science Laboratory Update

On November 26, 2011 at 10:02am EST NASA successfully launched the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) from Cape Canaveral aboard an Atlas V rocket. Shortly afterwards NASA propelled it on course to Mars.

One of our very own members, Mark, the owner of the @DallasMars Twitter handle, attended the event as a special guest of NASA’s Tweetup.

We are very excited about the mission and its science and will provide regular updates. The link to the MSL page at JPL can be found on our Links page.

November meeting summary

All:

On November 25 we had our last regularly scheduled meeting for 2012, with seven members in attendance.  Mark could not make it, being still in Florida after seeing MSL launch as a Tweetup VIP, Dan and Mina were out for the holidays, and Kris was under the weather, but we still had a good turnout, including a surprise drop by of Judah and his wife.

Of course, the big news was the perfect launch of MSL the day before.  Curtis brought his laptop and we could all see again the launch and orbit of the biggest baddest probe ever sent to Mars.  243 days to go till it lands, but who’s counting!

Tom gave us a rundown on the History Channel’s ‘Crash Landing on Mars’ (its on YouTube) where Bob Z was interviewed, and Lucinda from National had a cameo as a stranded astronaut struggling to get to the return vehicle.  Never know what you will find on late night TV!

We discussed some of the conditions at the MDRS site regarding providing shelter for the URC competition, but we could not get an update on the editing and publishing status with Kris’s absence.

2011 has been a good year for our group, but we all did let the pace slow a bit
after the convention – naturally enough – but we need to step it back up in 2012!

Hope to see you all at Carol’s Christmas party, and we will start up our regular meetings again in the end of January, 2012.

If not, happy holidays and new year, and smooth landings!

Kurt