In a meeting held in Denver, March 4th and 5th, the Flashline Management Committee completed selections of the volunteers slated for the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station on Devon Island during the summer of 2001.

The selections were made out of a pool of some 250 volunteers who responded to a Mars Society public call issued during November of 2000. Because there were many more qualified volunteers than the slots available, the crew selection process was quite difficult, involving successive downselects to narrow the field. Thus, in addition to those chosen for slots this year, about 100 others were ranked as fully qualified for crew service and were awarded alternate crew status. We hope to include many of these alternate crew members in future operations on Devon island, or in the Mars Desert Research Station which we plan to have operational in the American southwest by late fall.

All volunteers will receive letters informing them of their status during the month of March.

The volunteers selected this year include 25 people, 12 new crew members and 13 returning crew members of whom 19 are men and 6 are women. Fifteen are from the US, four are Canadians, two are French, two are British, one is from Belgium and one from Denmark. One of the Americans was born in Australia and one of the Canadians was born in Sri Lanka. Those selected include 4 geologists, 2 biologists, 1 chemist, 7 engineers, 2 doctors, 3 internet technologist, an architect, and an independent filmmaker. The crews will be divided into 6 rotations, of which Flashline Project Scientist Pascal Lee will lead 4 and Mars Society president Robert Zubrin will lead two.

The following are the Flashline volunteer selections for the 2001 season on Devon Island.

New Volunteers 2001
(Name, Work Field, Affiliation, Citizenship)

• John Blitch, Roboticist, DARPA, US
• Brent Bos, Optical Scientist, Univ. of Arizona, US
• Sam Burbank, Filmmaker, Independent, US
• Cathrine Frandsen, Physicist, Niels Bohr Institute, Denmark
• Charles Frankel, Geologist, Planete Mars, French/US
• George James, Engineer, NASA JSC, US
• Christine Jayarajah, Chemist, Univ. of Toronto, Canada
• Jaret Matthews, Engineer, Purdue University, US
• Rocky Persaud, Geologist, Univ. of Toronto, Canada
• Vladimir Pletser, Physicist, ESA, Belgian
• Katy Quinn, Geologist, MIT, US born in Australia
• Chris Shank, Engineer, USAF, US

• Robert Zubrin, Engineer, Pioneer Astronautics, US
• Pascal Lee, Geologist, SETI Institute, French
• Marc Boucher, Internet Engineer, aTerra Corp, Canada
• Steve Braham, Physicist, Simon Fraser Univ., UK
• Bill Clancey, Computer Scientist, NASA Ames, US
• Charles Cockell, Biologist, British Antarctic Survey, UK
• Jeff Jones, MD, NASA JSC, US (Tentative)
• Larry Lemke, Engineer, NASA Ames, US
• Darlene Lim, Biologist, Univ. of Toronto, Canada
• George Martin, MD, USAF, US (Tentative)
• Kelly Snook, Engineer, NASA Ames, US
• Frank Schubert, Architect, Largeart, US
• Carol Stoker, Engineer, NASA Ames, US

Next week we will release the tentative crew rotations.