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Current Events:
Send Your Name to Mars! NASA invites you to send your name to Mars on the Mars 2001 Lander! Names are being collected that will be placed on a CDROM that will be carried on the Mars 2001 lander. A certificate is also available and is provided free of charge by NASA. Our goal is to collect several million names! Names can be submitted here: http://spacekids.hq.nasa.gov/2001/ The Mars Surveyor 2001 Lander is scheduled for launch on April 10, 2001, and will land on Mars on Jan. 22, 2002. The lander will touch down near the Martian equator, carrying a spare Mars Pathfinder rover, a robotic arm and several other science instruments, including three that will return data in support of eventual human exploration. The 2001 Lander will carry an imager to take pictures of the surrounding terrain during its rocket-assisted descent to the surface. The descent imaging camera will provide images of the landing site for geologic analyses, and will aid planning for initial operations and traverses by the rover. The 2001 Lander will also be a platform for instruments and technology experiments designed to provide key insights to decisions regarding successful and cost-effective human missions to Mars. Hardware on the Lander will be used for a demonstration test of rocket propellant production using gases in the Martian atmosphere. Other equipment will characterize the Martian soil properties and surface radiation environment. For more details, please visit the Mars Surveyor 2001 mission home page: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/2001/
The Mars Surveyor '98 Mission Status
Mars Climate Orbiter (MCO)/Mars Polar Lander (MPL) Both the MCO and MPL spacecraft continue to perform well in cruise. The flight team is gradually turning its focus from ongoing cruise operations to preparations for the arrival of the two spacecraft at Mars this fall. The atttide determination and control group is nearing completion of an extensive series of tests in the MCO ground-based simulator, in preparation for an in-flight test of the "all-stellar" mode. The in-flight checkout is being delayed by one week (from May 3-7 to May 10-14) for some additional testing to first be completed, in order to ensure a smooth flight test and transition into this new mode. Another significant test activity nearing completion is stress-testing of the Mars Orbit Insertion (MOI) software and command sequence. The test team reports that, thus far, all of the MOI stress tests run in the MCO simulator have been successful in dealing with a variety of simulated sensor failures and off-nominal conditions.
Click here for further information.
Second International Mars Society Convention The Second International Mars Society Convention will be held at the University of Colorado in Boulder, August 12-15, 1999. Last year's Founding Convention drew 700 people from over 40 countries from around the world, with close to 180 papers presented, and was covered extensively in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, ABC-Discover News, and many other leading world press. It is anticipated that attendance at this years' convention will exceed 2,000. Click here for full details. Once you have paid your convention dues, please contact Kristen K. Boekhoff so that she can keep a tally.
Members! Want to order Mars Society videos or books at the volume discount rate? Click here for more details...
Monthly Meeting Minutes are online!
Monthly Donation Campaign For the price of a pizza you can support the Mars Society. The Mars Society relies on financial support from its members in order to keep the organization running and accomplish its goals. While sometimes it can be very difficult for us to give large amounts of money, small amounts add up too! One of the goals of our last meeting was to encourage our members to send monthly donations to the Mars Society. If you have access to electronic banking, you can set up a recurring payment so that every month $10-$25 is deducted from your account and sent to headquarters (The Mars Society, P.O. Box 273, Indian Hills, CO 80454). Otherwise, you can do it the traditional way--mark your calendar and send in a paper check! We have some great projects and plans in the works, but we need your help! Click here to fill out your contact information if you're interested in having direct deposit set up.
The purpose of the Mars Society is: To further the goal of the exploration and settlement of the Red Planet. This will be done by:
Starting small, with hitchhiker payloads on government funded missions, we intend to use the credibility that such activity will engender to mobilize larger resources that will enable stand-alone private robotic missions and ultimately human exploration. You can read our founding declaration by clicking here. Read the New York Times article about the Founding Convention of The Mars Society. |
Requests concerning this Web site should be directed to Stephen M. Glenfield, Webmaster.
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