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A message from Paul Wooster, President of the
New England Chapter:
March 9, 2001
Dear New England Mars Society Member,
At our executive meeting on February 21st the new officers took over, and we discussed events and activities for the next few months. I've included the listing of this year's executive, as well as brief descriptions of our currently planned activities and events, below.
Executive meetings will be held every second Wednesday, through at least the end of May (a report from the last meeting will be available shortly; the next one is Wednesday, March 21, at 7pm, location TBA.) In addition to the more formal executive meetings, we'll be having weekly Mars Lunches on Mondays from 12-2 with the location announced the week before (next week's lunch will be at Cinderella's on Main St. near Mass Ave. in Cambridge, contact mars@mit.edu for directions.)
The New England Mars Society will be becoming much more active over the next while, so we could definitely use your assistance. We'll be keeping you informed of what's happening on a regular basis, and we'd also really appreciate it if you could contact us directly if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, or especially would like to help out. The more ideas and active members we have the better.
With your help, I believe that this will be a great year for the Mars Society!
Sincerely,
Paul Wooster, President
New England Mars Society
http://chapters.marssociety.org/usa/ma/
mars@mit.edu, 617-497-6802
P.S. Please pass this on to others you believe would be interested.
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2001 MSNE Executive:
- President: Paul Wooster, pwooster@mit.edu
- VP - Communications: Benoit Martin, brm@mit.edu
- VP - Finance: Anthony Schilling, amstony@aol.com
- VP - MIT: Cassandra Rodriquez, cassie22@mit.edu
- VP - New England: Bruce Mackenzie, bmackenzie@alum.mit.edu
Activities Coordinators
- Political Outreach: Daniar Hussain, dhussain@mit.edu
- Educational Outreach: Erika Brown, elb@mit.edu
New Chapter Coordinators
- New Hampshire: Stephen Glenfield, sglenfie@nortelnetworks.com
- Boston University: Luke Colby, lcolby@bu.edu
- Cape Cod: Jim Partan, jpartan@whoi.edu
(Note: If you're interested in forming a chapter in your area, please contact mars@mit.edu)
Event and Project Heads (emails are project specific in some cases)
- Yuri's Night: Aurelie Bressollette, souiti@yurisnight.net
- Mars: 2020 Vision (NMB): Aurelie Bressollette, roswell@mit.edu
- Mars Week 2001: Margarita Marinova, mmm@mit.edu
- Martian Chronicles, Margarita Marinova, marsyouth@mit.edu
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Event and Activity Descriptions:
The following is a listing of our currently scheduled meetings and events. We also have a number of meetings, etc., on an ad hoc basis, so if you would like to hear about them as well, sign-up for one of our regional mailing lists (there's information near the end of this email on how to sign-up for those lists.)
------March------
Saturday, March 10 - High School Studies Program Begins
As part of the MIT ESP's High School Studies Program, we will be teaching high school student about Mars over a series of ten weekly classes of 2 hours each. Contact Carole Joppin (cjoppin@mit.edu) for more information, and to learn how you can take part.
Monday, March 12 - Mars Lunch
12-2 p.m., Cinderella's (Main St. near Mass Ave., in Cambridge)
If you have a chance, drop in for a little while to chat about the Mars Society and Mars in general, and to get to know some more members of the Society. Contact mars@mit.edu for more information.
Monday, March 19 - Mars Lunch
12-2 p.m., Location TBA
Wednesday, March 21 - Executive Meeting
7 p.m., Location TBA
March 26 to 30 - MIT's Spring Break
Mars Society Lunch will likely be cancelled
Late March/Early April
Boy/Girl Scouts Space Badge Achievement Day
Contact Erika Brown (elb@mit.edu) for more information.
------April------
Monday, April 2 - Mars Lunch
12-2 p.m., Location TBA
Wednesday, April 4 - Executive Meeting
7 p.m., Location TBA
Saturday, April 7 - Mars Odyssey Launch Event
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Cape Cod, MA
This will be the Cape Cod chapter's first major event and, as part of our MarsLive! series, will celebrate the launch of the Mars 2001 Odyssey Orbiter. Contact Jim Partan (jpartan@whoi.edu) for more information.
Monday, April 9 - Mars Lunch
12-2 p.m., Location TBA
Thursday, April 12 - Yuri's Space Night Party
Boston Area (specific location, time TBA)
Yuri's Night is a world-wide celebration of the anniversary of both the first manned flight in space and the first launch of the space shuttle. We're in the process of organizing a large event in the Boston area as part of this. If you're interested in helping out, or would simply like more information, contact Aurelie Bressollette (souiti@yurisnight.net). At this event we'll highlight the point that, since it's been forty years since man first ventured into space, and we've been circling around in the space shuttle for the past twenty, isn't it time we did something new? This will be our largest single event of the spring, and so we really look forward to seeing you there.
Monday, April 16 - Mars Lunch
12-2 p.m., Location TBA
Wednesday, April 18 - Executive Meeting
7 p.m., Location TBA
Monday, April 23 - Mars Lunch
12-2 p.m., Location TBA
Saturday, April 28 - Astronomy Day
9-5 p.m., Museum of Science, Boston, MA
The MIT Chapter will have tables at the Boston Museum of Science during their Astronomy Day event in order to interest more people in the Mars Society, and the exploration and settlement of Mars. If you'd like to help out for a part of the day, contact Cassie Rodriquez (cassie22@mit.edu).
Monday, April 30 - Mars Lunch
12-2 p.m., Location TBA
-------May-------
Wednesday, May 2 - Executive Meeting
7 p.m., Location TBA
Monday, May 7 - Mars Lunch
12-2 p.m., Location TBA
Saturday, May 12 - Astronomy Day
9-5 p.m., Christa McAuliffe Planetarium, Concord, NH
The New Hampshire Chapter will have its first major event as part of the Christa McAuliffe Planetarium's Astronomy Day. Contact Steve Glenfield (sglenfie@nortelnetworks.com) for more information or to help out.
Monday, May 14 - Mars Lunch
12-2 p.m., Location TBA
Wednesday, May 16 - Executive Meeting
7 p.m., Location TBA
May 22-24 - NASA Customer Engagement Conference
Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX
The MIT Mars: 2020 Vision team will present their work at this conference as part of the NASA Means Business Competition.
-----Summer------
We'll continue ongoing projects, with additional emphasis on technical project development, and likely also have tables at various air shows in the New England area.
August 23 - 26 - Mars Society 4th Annual Convention
Stanford University, California
See http://www.marssociety.org for more information and to register.
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In addition to the events described above, we have a number of projects and activities that will run on an ongoing basis throughout the spring.
The Martian Chronicles
The Chronicles are a newsletter we produce in association with the Mars Society Youth Chapter intended as both an educational outreach tool and an opportunity for youth to express their interest in Mars. You can read the just released Winter Issue and back issues online at http://chapters.marssociety.org/youth/MChronicles.shtml. We'd also love to have any articles or other submissions you'd like to prepare. Please contact marsyouth@mit.edu for more information concerning submissions and other ways in which you can be of assistance, or if you're interested in subscribing to The Martian Chronicles.
Mars Week 2001 planning
Mars Week is a large annual conference at MIT organized in coordination with ThinkMars, which typically takes place in the fall. Planning for Mars Week 2001 will begin shortly. If you're interested in taking a lead role in this year's Mars Week, please contact mars@mit.edu
Mars: 2020 Vision
The MIT Mars: 2020 Vision team submitted an entry to the NASA Means Business competition in January, and has since been selected as one of five finalists. The team will continue to work on their concepts, based strongly on Educational Outreach for all ages, and present at JSC in late May. Further information and the team's proposal are available online at http://web.mit.edu/mars/2020vision/. If you'd like to take part, or have any questions, you can contact the team at roswell@mit.edu
Educational Development
In addition to the Saturday classes through HSSP and the efforts of the 2020 Vision team, we'll be working on developing additional teaching resources and ideas, and greatly increasing the scale of our Educational Outreach efforts. For example, we are already in contact with City Year Boston, concerning teaching a number of Mars-related classes. If you'd like to teach (whether or not you have experience doing so), have some great ideas for class materials, or even know of a good group to get in touch with concerning teaching there, please contact Erika Brown (elb@mit.edu).
Operation Congress
To let Congress know that there are supporters for human Mars missions and what the possibilities of such missions are, we will be getting in touch with our local representatives as part of the larger Mars Society Operation Congress effort. Dan Hussain (dhussain@mit.edu) will be coordination our activities in this regards, so please contact him if you are interested in helping out. If you've been following the recent news regarding NASA, you'll know that there are currently a large number of changes in store for the agency. It is imperative that Congress makes Mars a definite priority.
Chapter Development
We'd like to start up a number of chapters beyond the well-established one at MIT and the newly forming ones in New Hampshire, Cape Cod, and Boston University. If you are interested in helping out with this, such as by organizing a local meeting of Mars Society members, please contact Bruce Mackenzie (bmackenzie@alum.mit.edu) so that we can assist you.
Speaker Series
In a similar fashion to last spring, we will have a series of speakers at MIT and perhaps at Boston University; once these talks have been scheduled we will send out further announcements. If you have any suggested speakers, please contact Cassie Rodriquez (cassie22@mit.edu).
Internet Development
We'll be doing some major overhauls to our existing websites, as well as developing a number of new services to make it easier for you learn what is going on throughout the New England region and in your local area, and to also make our organization run more efficiently and to convey our message to the public more effectively. If you have experience using HTML, various web-programming languages, databases, etc., or are interested in learning, please contact Ben Martin (brm@mit.edu) so as to help out.
Fundraising
In order to make all of these things happen, a wide variety of resources are required. Tony Schilling (amstony@aol.com) will be heading up a fundraising campaign in order to assist us in this regard. If you'd like to assist, or have any suggested avenues of advance, please get in touch with him.
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Mailing lists
In addition to this New England-wide announcement list, we have a number of chapter and project mailing lists, an executive list, and a general Mars chat list, the majority of which are administered through YahooGroups.
New England
msne-talk
This list is a general discussion list for talking about any topic related to Mars (for example the recent cuts in the Mars program at JSC.) If you'd like to be added to this list, send an email to msne-talk-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
msne-exec
This is the planning list used by the executive to discuss and give status reports on the various activities of the New England Mars Society. The traffic can get quite high at times, but if you're interested in taking part, send an email to msne-exec-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Regional Lists
Send emails to the following addresses if you're interested in helping out with or taking part in events and activities in the respective areas:
Greater Boston - Automated - mitms-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
New Hampshire - Steve Glenfield - sglenfie@nortelnetworks.com
Cape Cod - Jim Partan - jpartan@whoi.edu
(Once again, if you're interested in starting a new chapter, just let us know, and we'd be glad to help out.)
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General Contact Info
We look forward to hearing from you if you have any questions, comments, or suggestion, or if you're interested in helping out. Thank you in advance.
Email: mars@mit.edu
Phone: 617-497-6802
Regular Mail:
Mars Society
77 Massachusetts Ave., W20-401
Cambridge, MA 02139
Web:
New England - http://chapters.marssociety.org/usa/ma/
New Hampshire - http://chapters.marssociety.org/usa/nh/
MIT - http://web.mit.edu/mars/
(Note: As part of our Internet Development efforts, these sites will become more integrated and offer a number of additional services, making it easier for you to find out exactly what is going on in your area, as well as to let you take part no matter where you are located.)
Paul Wooster
- New England Chapter Coordinator
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