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MISSION: To raise public and political support and encourage eduation in the  St. Louis metropolitian area about the necessity to continue exploration through the heavens and to one day conquer humanities' greatest challenge: HUMAN SETTLEMENT ON MARS!  THE ROAD TO MARS RUNS THROUGH ST.LOUIS!! Recent Mars Society/ Space News: Mars Society 2006 Conference   1/20/2005 This year's Mars Society Conference was recently announced. It will be held at the L'Enfant Plaza Hotel in Washington, DC. The conference will commence August 3 and end August 6. The gathering will highlight results from Spirit, Opportunity, Mars Express missions and include speakers like Michael Griffin (NASA, Administrator), Elon Musk (CEO and Founder - Space X), and  Robert Zubrin (Pioneer Astronautics, The Mars Society) along with many others. Also results from recent MDRS, Devon Island, and FMARS crews. This conference is already being predicted to be the best conference to date. Also check the Mars Society's main website for hotel room discounts.     Click here for more information about registration Click here for more information about the L'Enfant Plaza Metro Station Mars Society to Launch 4-Month Mars Mission to the High Arctic in 2007 06/26/2006 The Mars Society Steering Committee has voted to undertake a four-month long simulated human Mars exploration mission to the high Arctic in 2007. The mission will consist of a single 7 person crew, which will journey to the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS) on Canada’s Devon Island, 900 miles from the North Pole, in early May 2007, and remain on site through the end of August 2007. You can see the press release here 1st Annual Martian Media Festival 06/26/2006  CALL FOR ENTRIES! We are happy to present the First Annual Martian Media Festival! The Martian Media Festival is open to all Mars Society Conference attendees who wish to show a film that relates to Mars, the Society or other visual viewpoints, either personal or institutional, that speak to the human expansion into space and on to Mars itself. All genres will be accepted for review, including shorts, animation, experimental, and documentary. We are especially interested in high-lighting any crew-produced documentaries from either FMARS or MDRS. There is no entry fee, and awards will be limited to a handsome cerificate and the hearty handclasp. And of course the fun of sharing your film with your fellow Martians! So far we have several crew documentaries from FMARS and MDRS, as well as a couple of animated shorts. So join us! For more info, rules, and entry form, click here  Space News Report: Dnepr Rocket Crashes Shortly After Launch By Tariq Malik Staff Writer posted: 26 July 2006 5:10 p.m. ET The Dnepr’s engine apparently shut down prematurely just after rocketing spaceward from its Baikonur Cosmodrome launch pad in Kazakhstan, Russian space officials told the Interfax News Agency. The rocket was scheduled to launch at 3:43 p.m. EDT (1943 GMT) and reach orbit a short time later. “The first stage failed to separate on time, it stopped working about 10 minutes earlier, and that is why the engine shut down in emergency mode,” Yury Nosenko, deputy head of Russia’s Federal Space Agency, told Interfax. A civilian Dnepr rocket built from a modified intercontinental ballistic missile failed to carry a clutch of small satellites into orbit Wednesday as it crashed just south of its Central Asian launch site, according to Russian wire reports.   Click here for more information     Japan Plans September Launch for New Spy Satellite By Eric Talmadge Associated Press Writer posted: 26 July 2006 3:55 p.m. ET TOKYO (AP) – Japan will launch an intelligence-gathering satellite in early September, the country's space agency announced Wednesday. The satellite, part of a program started in 2003 in concern over secretive North Korea's nuclear and missile programs, will be launched atop the domestically developed H2-A rocket from Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan, the space agency JAXA said in a statement. It would be the third intelligence-gathering satellite Japan has launched. The first two were put into orbit in March 2003. JAXA plans to launch a fourth next winter. The program, overseen by the Cabinet, would enable Japan to survey any point in the world. Continue reading the article  here Lofty Goals For Higher Education: Students Build and Test Near-Space Technology By Leonard David Senior Space Writer posted: 12 July 2006 06:38 am ET BOULDER, Colorado – For students seeking higher education, you can’t do much better than a classroom at the edge of space. Thanks to Student Hands-on Training (SHOT) workshops, aspiring satellite researchers can trial-run payload ideas by getting a lift from skyward-soaring balloons. SHOT activities are on-going at the NASA-funded Colorado Space Grant Consortium at the University of Colorado. Since the late 1980s, the consortium has given students hands-on experience with real-world space projects, ranging from balloon-toted payloads to small orbiting spacecraft, as well as telescopes and reduced gravity experimentation. SHOT is partnered with the Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) University Nanosat Program that is funded through the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. The objective is to foster student creativity and innovation in designing, fabricating, testing and flying small satellites. Click here to read the rest of the article New Way Suggested to Search for Life on Mars By Robert Roy Britt Senior Science Writer posted: 30 June 2006 12:22 pm ET A shiny coating found on rocks in many of Earth's deserts suggest a new way to search for signs of life on Mars, scientists said today. The coating, known as desert varnish, binds traces of DNA, amino acids and other organic compounds to desert rocks over the eons. Desert varnish has been found in the Atacama desert in Chile, the Mojave desert in California and Canyonlands National Park in Utah. Prehistoric people carved the varnish away, revealing lighter-colored rock underneat to create petroglyphs. The logic is simple: Samples of Martian desert varnish could perhaps show whether there has been life on Mars at any time during its 4.5-billion-year history. Continue reading this article here Home Again: Six Astronauts Celebrate Shuttle Landing By Tariq Malik Staff Writer posted: 17 July 2006 05:20 pm ET CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – The sky may be cloudy over NASA’s Florida spaceport, but six astronauts are all smiles after riding their space shuttle back to Earth Monday. “It’s good to be back,” said Discovery’s STS-121 mission commander Steven Lindsey.  “We had a long, but successful mission.” NASA’s STS-121 astronauts landed aboard Discovery at 9:14 a.m. EDT (1314 GMT) today after a 13-day spaceflight to the International Space Station (ISS). It was Lindsey who deftly piloted the spacecraft – then a 100-ton glider – to a graceful stop despite a thick cloud layer and some last minute runway changes. Continue reading the article here

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