Mars Society to Launch 4-Month Mars Mission to the High Arctic
Press Release
For immediate release, June 26, 2006
For further information contact the Mars Society at
info@marssociety.org, or visit our website at www.marssociety.org

By a vote of 21 to 0, with 11 abstentions, 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.

During these four months, the crew will conduct a sustained program
of field exploration in geology, microbiology, and paleontology, just
as an actual team of explorers would on the Red Planet, while
operating under many Mars mission constraints.

For example, no one will be able to go outside without wearing
spacesuit simulators, which will restrict their mobility, agility,
and situational awareness, and force them to communicate with each
other strictly by radio. The isolated team of 7 will have to do all
their own field work, lab work, repair of equipment, reportage,
chores of daily life, and get along, and thereby be forced to deal
with an array of problems that the first human explorers will
eventually face on Mars. By doing so, the Mars Society will gain
invaluable knowledge needed to plan the first human expeditions to
the Red Planet.

While on the island, the crew will communicate daily through a
satellite link to Mission Support Group located in the continental
United States. The Mission Support Group will include a Remote
Science Team, to guide the crew's exploration efforts, and an
Engineering Team to assist them in dealing with engineering problems.
The long-distance interaction of the crew with the Mission Support
Group will also be the subject of research, as the development of an
effective art of telescience is essential to maximizing the
effectiveness of human explorers on Mars.

Participation in the crew, the Mission Support Group, the Remote
Science Team, and the Engineering Team will be open to volunteers
from around the world. A formal call for volunteers, as well as an
extensive discussion of the plan for the mission, will be presented
at the 9th International Mars Society Convention, which will be held
August 3-6, 2006 at the L'Enfant Plaza Hotel, Washington DC.
Registration for the convention is now open at www.marssociety.org.

Preliminary plans for the mission call for the following. First, ATVs
and other advance supplies will be brought in on ski-equipped Twin
Otters during April, when the snow on the Devon Island landing strip
is thick. In May, the snow is to think to make a ski-plane landing
safe, so the crew will cross the ice between Resolute Bay and Devon
on skidoos. At the end of August, helicopters are available, and will
be used to pull the crew out.

In order to make the funds available to enable the 4-month mission in
2007, the Steering Committee decided to cancel the 1-month FMARS
field season previously planned for 2006. As the Mars Society has
already successfully performed four 1-month crew rotations at FMARS,
another was deemed unnecessary. Additional funds are, however,
needed to obtain scientific equipment to maximize the return of the
mission. Donations are welcome, and sponsorship opportunities will be
available to companies, institutions, and individuals who wish to
participate financially in support of this historic adventure.

Commenting on the Steering Committee's bold decision to launch the
mission, Mars Society president Dr. Robert Zubrin said; "This is the
right thing to do, at the right time. The 4-month FMARS mission
represents a powerful extension of our analog research program to
date. The four-month duration will exceed that of any other space
agency isolation studies, but, more importantly, will involve a crew
that is actively being tasked to conduct a sustained program of field
exploration under Mars-like constraints in an extreme environment the
whole time. No one else has ever done anything like it. This is going
to be breakthrough research."

For further information about the Mars Society, visit our website at
http://www.marssociety.org