Posted by tourdemars to Mars Society at February 24, 2003 12:00 PM

For her trip to Mars, Jennifer Laing is taking a copy of Geoffrey Blainey's The Tyranny of Distance and a DVD of The Dish. The Melbourne PhD student is one of six Australians who will spend the next few weeks inside an eight-metre cylinder parked in a Utah desert, researching life in a Martian colony. The members of the non-profit Mars Society will eat pre-packaged military food and sleep inside the two-storey Mars Desert Research Station, going outside twice a day to collect rocks and to look for microscopic life. They will also test spacesuits and two vehicles.