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. Registration is open now.

The Mars Society is pleased to announce that ‘The Mars Underground’, a documentary film that became an instant classic among space enthusiasts, has been updated and revised by the director and released on DVD. Leading aerospace engineer and Mars Society President Dr. Robert Zubrin has a dream. He wants to get humans to the planet Mars in the next ten years. Now, with the advent of a revolutionary plan, Mars Direct, Dr. Zubrin shows how we can use present day technology and natural resources on Mars to make human settlement possible. But can he win over the skeptics at NASA and the wider world? ‘The Mars Underground’ is a landmark documentary that follows Dr. Zubrin and his team as they try to bring this incredible dream to life. Through spellbinding animation, the film takes us on a daring first journey to the Red Planet and envisions a future Mars teeming with life and terraformed into a blue world. A must-see experience for anyone concerned for our global future and the triumph of the human spirit.

The Republican presidential candidates will convene in Orlando, Florida on Thursday, September 22nd at 9:00 p.m. EST to participate in the FOX News/Google Debate. The two companies have invited members of the public to submit questions for the chance to have them asked live during the political forum. The Mars Society is calling on its members and friends to submit questions with a Mars-related theme for the GOP presidential debate. For example, “"Will your administration ensure the U.S. resumes a destination driven space program which results in sending Americans to Mars?" Please take advantage of this opportunity to submit your questions in video or text form at www.youtube.com/foxnews and vote on others that you would like to hear asked live of the candidates. Those submitting questions must have a current YouTube account.

The Mars Society and its membership were saddened to learn of the crash of a chartered airplane over the weekend outside Resolute Bay in the Canadian arctic territory of Nunavut. The tragic incident took the lives of 12 people and injured three. The Mars Society has had a decade-long relationship with the small hamlet of Resolute Bay as the nearest community to the organization’s Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS) project, a simulated Mars habitat in northern Canada. A close friend of the Mars Society, Aziz Kheraj, owner of the South Camp Inn in Resolute Bay, was directly impacted by the tragedy, losing one grandchild in the crash, while having another injured and currently hospitalized. “The Mars Society and its membership extend their prayers and condolences to the families and community of Resolute Bay during this difficult time,” said Dr. Robert Zubrin, President of the Mars Society.

The Mars Society is pleased to announce that plans for the 11th field season at the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) are moving ahead rapidly. The upcoming field season is now planned to run from December 3, 2011 through May 6, 2012. Volunteer slots are open for participation as a crew member at the MDRS in Utah. Crew members will be required to pay for their own transportation to and from Grand Junction, Colorado, and also pay a $1,000 participation fee (reduced to $500 for students) to cover station expenses.

The recent announcement by the entrepreneurial Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) that it intends to field within two years a heavy lift rocket capable of delivering more than twice the payload of any booster now flying poses a thrilling question: Can we reach Mars in this decade? I believe the answer is yes. In this paper, I will lay out a plan to make use of the soon-to-be-available SpaceX systems to accomplish near-term human Mars exploration with minimal technology development. First, I will layout a baseline mission architecture and plan. In the next section, I will discuss various technology alternatives available within the selected mission architecture. Then, in the following section, I will discuss alternative mission architectures. I will then conclude with some overall observations bearing on the question of sustained exploration and settlement of Mars. It may be noted that the author is not an employee of the SpaceX company, and does not have detailed knowledge of the SpaceX systems. It will take the hard work and ingenuity of the SpaceX engineers to develop configurations and systems that can make these ideas a reality. Nevertheless, it is apparent that if an approach such as that recommended here is adopted, the requirements and capabilities numbers can be made to converge. We can reach Mars in our time.

Dr. Robert Zubrin, President of the Mars Society and author of “The Case for Mars,” will present a radical new plan for space development during his featured address at the 2011 International Space Development Conference in Huntsville, Alabama. Scheduled for Sunday, May 22nd at 9:30 a.m., Dr. Zubrin will lay out a bold new proposal to establish inexpensive access to orbit, get humans to the planet Mars and begin opening up the solar system to human exploration and settlement within the present decade.

As a child, Kavya Manyapu would stare into the night sky above Hyderabad, India. Her father would identify the different stars. He would tell her about man's first steps on the moon. He would fuel her dream to become an astronaut. Later this month, Manyapu will spend two weeks on Mars -- or, at least, the closest thing on Earth to Mars. The Mars Desert Research Station in Utah draws aeronautical engineers such as Manyapu, geologists, physicians and astro-biologists to its small cylindrical habitat, where research for the first human mission to Mars is taking place. The station is a prototype for the base that astronauts could use on Mars.

Travel twenty minutes north of this tiny town, to the craggy red desert of the San Rafael Swell, and you may discover a spaceship. The cylindrical craft isn't from another world, but it offers a glimpse of one. It is the centerpiece of the Mars Desert Research Station, an environment created by the Mars Society, a growing non-profit organization that supports the research, exploration, and eventual colonization of the mysterious red planet. The swell, chosen as a simulation site for its topical resemblance to Mars, provides the volunteer researchers who come here with an opportunity to live and work in a Mars analog, an environment that's as close to the red planet as is earthly possible. While conducting geological and psychological experiments that could someday be useful to a real Martian expedition, this small group of Mars devotees -- some space scientists, some simply eager adventurers -- live and work in complete "sim." They consume only dehydrated, shelf-stable food like Bisquick and ghee, exercise to preserve their muscles in "reduced gravity," abide by the "if it's yellow, let it mellow" adage in an effort to conserve water, and wear spacesuits when they venture outside.

On Saturday, June 5, in the remote southeast Utah desert, a team of engineering students from Oregon State University emerged as the champion of the fourth annual University Rover Challenge (URC). Competition events began on Friday morning, June 4, at two adjacent sites near the Mars Society's Mars Desert Research Station near Hanksville, Utah. The "sample return mission" involved investigating sites that might have microbial life and bringing back a sample. At the second site, the "equipment servicing task" required rovers to flip switches, push buttons, and insert plugs into outlets.

Topics: Human spaceflight, US space policy, Mars. Dr. Robert Zubrin was our guest for this non-stop two hour program to discuss the proposed changes in US space policy and why having a destination is so important for our national space program. For more information, visit The Mars Society website at www.marssociety.org. Note the coming Mars Society Conference which Dr. Zubrin told us about, scheduled for Dayton, Ohio from August 5-8, 2010. Dr. Zubrin started our discussion saying that we could go to Mars in about ten years as technology was not the issue. I then asked why even have a human spaceflight program and why Mars. Bob provided us with a comprehensive response and discussion to both of these questions. In fact, this nearly two hour discussion was action packed, covered lots of aspects of space policy, was very comprehensive, and while he was critical of administration policy, he also offered solutions to the problems he described. During our discussion, Dr. Zubrin had much to say about the Augustine Commission findings, Science Advisor John Holdren, the budget expenses earmarked for the ISS when the US will not be visiting the ISS except using the Soyuz, and more. Listeners asked him about nuclear rockets, specifically Vasimr. Dr. Zubrin who has his doctorate in nuclear engineering, had much to say about nuclear rocket propulsion including Vasimr and nuclear thermal which is quite different. Listen to what he had to say about these different types of propulsion and why one is doable and one is extremely hard and costly since it requires so much added power, the latter being VASIMIR. Dr. Zubrin dissected the administration plan, especially the part about heavy lift. Listeners suggested that the research called for in the administration plan for heavy lift was about getting affordable heavy lift. Listen carefully to what Dr. Zubrin had to say about this and the entire research program suggested in the administration plan. Bob went to great lengths to talk about why policy needs a destination and time line, be it the Moon, a NEO, or Mars. He offered us many insights about programs without destination goals and timelines. Do you agree with him? Other listeners asked him many questions about Mars Direct including a potential test flight program, tethers, artificial gravity, and needed milestones. He was asked about a Mars fly by mission or landing on Phobos, he talked about orbital propellant depots, the differences in radiation for an ISS crew as compared to a Mars Direct crew. Toward the end of the program, Bob explained the old but important political doctrine of Thomas Malthus known as Malthusianism and why this is the opposite of what space development is all about. Listen to what Dr. Zubrin had to say about this and its influence in the current administration. At the end of the program, I asked him for his thoughts on the use of commercial launch providers and he said he was supportive of that as long as they can meet the requirements and do it. He indirectly referenced the GAP in this discussion but again said a program without destinations and time frames is a flawed or no program at all.

On complex issues, as is often said, it is possible for intelligent people to disagree. That was certainly the case March 15 at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, when five leaders of the space exploration intelligentsia met to discuss NASA's plans for human spaceflight. The topic of the event, the 10th annual Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate, could hardly have been more timely, given the February budget request from President Obama that sought to drastically change NASA's direction for human spaceflight and the way the agency does that business. If the budget survives Congress, NASA could start hiring private corporations to launch U.S. astronauts into orbit rather than use its own hardware; Obama's plan would also scrap the existing Constellation Program, including the Ares rockets being developed to lift humans beyond low Earth orbit for the first time since the 1970s.

Like an astronaut of fake space, Vincent Fournier has spent the past decade and a half traveling the globe, documenting some of the government-run environments where space explorers train, and the lonesome, white-suited explorers themselves. The results — from the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre, the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah, the Atacama Desert Observatories in Chile, and elsewhere — look less like massive science experiments on Earth than the landscapes of a futuristic sci-fi flick.

Even as the Obama Administration plans to scrap human space exploration and the prospect of manned missions to Mars becomes more remote than ever, the insurmountable odds haven’t stopped The Mars Society from conducting ongoing simulations and research into what challenges humans will face should we make it to the Red Planet. But there’s a surprising degree of drama behind their work. According to The Mars Society mission statement, the goal of the non-profit organization is “to help develop key knowledge needed to prepare for human Mars exploration, and to inspire the public by making sensuous the vision of human exploration of Mars.” Since the establishment of the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) outside of Hanksville Utah in 2001, The Mars Society has maintained an ongoing research presence at the habitat.

Deep in the deserts of southeast Utah, Mars enthusiasts have conducted simulated voyages to the Red Planet since 2002. It's how the Mars Society inspires and prepares humans for interplanetary travel. David D. Levine, a Hugo-award winning science-fiction writer and Portland resident, just returned from two weeks at the Mars Society's desert research station, where he lived and worked with five others in 23-foot-wide cylindrical habitat with a failing electric generator and nonfunctioning showers. He spoke with The Oregonian upon his return...