Home Page

 Canadian Links
   About Us
   Chat
   Events
   In the News
   Newsletter
   Projects

   Regional Contacts
   Montreal Chapter
   Ottawa Chapter
   Toronto Chapter
   Waterloo Chapter
   Vancouver Chapter
   Victoria Chapter

International Mars Society Links

 About Us
   Purpose
   Founding Declaration
   By-Laws
   Chapters
   Task Forces
   Contacts
   Steering Committee

 News & Content
   Bulletins
   Whole Mars Catalog
   Mars News
   MS In the News

 Shopping
   Shop Winnipeg
   Mars Store
   Shop Canada

 Interactive
   New Mars Forum
   Chat Rooms
   Mars Images & Charts
   Mars Toolkit
   Seti@Home

 International Sites
   Australia
   Austria
   Belgium
   France
   Germany
   Ireland
   Japan
   Mexico
   Netherlands
   Poland
   Russia
   San Marino
   South Africa
   Spain
   United Kingdom
   United States
   Other

Chapter meeting
The Winnipeg Chapter holds its monthly meetings in Winnipeg, but membership is open to all residents of Manitoba.
Chapter meetings used to be the third Friday of each month, but our room booking has been bumped. Check here for next meeting date and location. To join the Winnipeg Chapter, send an email to or just show up at the next meeting. To become a member of the Mars Society Canada, click on Join Now. There are no dues for chapter membership, and individuals who have not purchased a membership are welcome to attend.

Next Meeting:
Tuesday, April 17, 2012, at 7:00pm
Millennium Library downtown. One of the Tutorial Rooms, ask at the desk on the second floor inside the Library.

Mars Bogs (with pictures of the peat bog aquarium, and measurements)
This project will grow soil on Mars. It can also convert solid bedrock to arable soil, a technique that can be used in Manitoba as well as Mars. The basis is to grow a peat bog, which will produce acid that will break down the minerals of ground-up rock, producing clay and releasing nutrients for plants. Blue-green algae (aka cyanobacteria) that grows in symbiosis with sphagnum moss will fix nitrogen from the atmosphere.

We have been lucky, we received a sample of "top moss" from a plant that processes Manitoba grown peat moss for garden centres. This top moss is live, growing moss from a bog. Our experiment is growing peat moss on glacial rock dust in a glass aquarium. We are not starting with any soil, just rock dust on aquarium gravel. It has grown since August 2010 and we are getting results.

Many thanks to Premier Horticulture, producers of PRO-MIX, PRO-MOSS, and SOGEMIX.

Other Projects
Web pages for several projects have been created. These projects are also available to all members of the Mars Society. The Existing Russian rockets web page is informational, but all other projects are intended for member participation. The projects are:

• Mars chemistry set - developing a student's kit to conduct many of the chemistry described on this website
• MCP spacesuit - to promote the club and demonstrate what is Mechanical Counter Pressure, we're making an analogue suit for demonstrations
• Dish array Deep Space ground station - an array of surplus analogue satellite TV dishes to receive data from NASA probes orbiting Mars
• Ion engine - a reduced size version of NASA's ion engine, intended for a micromission probe to Mars
• Greenhouse - soil simulant and enclosure; design an inflatable structure for Mars that can grow plants on Earth in winter
• Chloroplast - designing a biochemical machine to manufacture carbohydrate using photosynthesis