Gerry, Shannon, and Jesse filled in as Mission Support for Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) on occasion in January (23rd thru 26th) and February (3rd thru 5th).

The one (Earth) year birthday for the Mars Exploration Rover "OPPORTUNITY" was celebrated on January 24th.

Our Mars Movie Night on January 21st was the Sci-Fi classic "Conquest of Space", preceded by "Duck Dodgers" and an episode of "The Purple Monster Strikes" serial.

February 2nd had us at the San Diego Astronomy Association's "Stars in the Park" telescope event with our display table -- a great night for viewing.

Ray Bradbury appeared for his annual San Diego lecutre, but few of the members attended on February 5th.

Our chapter will bring the rover and our information table for an outreach event at the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center on February 12, 2005, in support of a JPL Mars/Saturn lecture.

This month's Mars Movie Night presents David Bowie in "The Man Who Fell to Earth."

Our chapter's Annual Banquet scheduled for February 26, 2005, may have to be re-scheduled due to conflicts. Possible dates are March 5th and 19th -- a TMS-SD Yahoo Poll will be used to decide a new date. It will be held at Killer Pizza From Mars in Oceanside.

Our chapter will be on hand at the San Diego Science Educators' Conference on March 12th and 13th.

Our chapter will be present at the ConDor XII Science Fiction Convention on March 25th through 27th. We intend to give one presentation on the past year on Mars and another on Mars in the movies. Members will also participate on other panels. We also intend to have a stand-alone outreach table.

Our chapter will be on hand for 3 presentations at Expanding Your Horizons at UCSD on April 2d. This event is geared towards steering young girls into science.

Our chapter will be at the San Diego Aerospace Museum's "Family Days" on April 9th for a special Family Day event.

On April 12th, Yuri's Night World Space Party, we intend to have a dinner at a local restaurant for ourselves and other space advocacy organizations in San Diego.

On April 16th, our chapter will give a multimedia presentation at the Weekend Talk Series at the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center in Balboa Park on the Mars Exploration Rovers' road trips.

On April 30th, our chapter will be present at Sally Ride's TOYchallenge 2005 at the San Diego Aerospace Museum.

There was nothing new to report regarding the San Diego Mars Rover, the Analog Suits, or the new Display Board.

We decided to forward a media request for the use of analog suits in a filming in Michigan to the Mars Society's Public Relations group.

Our domain name, MarsSanDiego.org is active again.

We finalized our decision on the denim embroidered shirts.

We decided not to renew our post office box.

We decided to get involved in "Podcasting." This would involve making small or large MP3 packages about Mars or space news for uploading to iPods and other MP3 players. iPod owners would be able to download these packages to their players and listen to them. We decided to investigate how this can be done. We made no decisions on topics for the packages.

We discussed reforming ourselves as a general space advocacy group, with the intention of being an umbrella organization for local groups (The Mars Society - San Diego would continue under this group). No decision was made on how to do this as yet or on a name. "ProSpace" was rejected as it was already taken. So was "Advocates for the Solar System", due to its unfortunate acronym. After the meeting, a suggestion was made to call it "Alliance for Humans in Space". More to come.

-dkr