Mars Society has Major Presence at World Space Congress

Posted by tourdemars to Mars Society at October 25, 2002 12:00 PM

The Mars Society had a major presence at the recent World Space Congress, which ran in Houston October 13, through 19. Mars Society president, Dr. Robert Zubrin, had a plenary address at the congress’s session of October 13, in which he discussed the operations research done by the society at its Mars Arctic and Desert Research Stations. Zubrin explained how the physical demands of the type of exploration work done at the stations underscored the need for NASA and ESA to begin substantial research into artificial gravity as the preferred method of traveling to Mars. He then highlighted the Mars Society’s Translife Mars Gravity Biosatellite program, currently being implemented by a group of universities led by MIT and including the University of Washington and the University of Queenland as key pioneering work in that direction. In a technical session later in the congress, Zubrin amplified these points by presenting a paper authored by Mars Society member Dr. Vladimir Pletser and co-author by Dr. Katy Quinn analyzing the operations associated with the deployment of a geophone seismic sounding array at the Society’s Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station during the summer of 2001. After this talk, Zubrin was approached by representatives of both the German and Russian space agencies, who expressed interest in participating in the Mars Society’s analog station field research program.