Explore Mars has arranged a preferred rate for the participants of the ISS & Mars conference for 11-14 April 2012 at the Holiday Inn accross the street from the ISU campus in Illkirch.
The rate is €79 per room (+ €1.50 city tax per person per night). The hotel has an airport shuttle service from Monday till Friday from and to airport Strasbourg Entzheim. Phone 03 88 40 84 84

Any person wanting to use this hotel (and rate) needs to contact the Holiday Inn Strasbourg-Illkirch directly to reserve a room. Make sure you tell the hotel that  you are coming for the CONFERENCE ISS & MARS.

view from the Holiday Inn towards the ISU campus

contact info of hotel:

Holiday Inn  Strasbourg Illkirch
Boulevard Sébastien Brant
Parc d’Innovation
67400 Strasbourg Illkirch
Tel : +33.3.88.40.84.84 / Fax : +33.3.88.66.22.83
contact@histrasbourg.com

The Holiday Inn Strasbourg-Illkirch is just 15 minutes from Strasbourg Airport, and if offers a free airport shuttle.
The Tramline A stop ‘Campus Illkirch‘ is just a few minutes’ walk from the hotel. It takes about 15 minutes from that stop to Strasbourg’s charming city centre.
There is complimentary wireless Internet throughout the hotel and in the guestrooms.
Guest of Holiday Inn Strasbourg Illkirch enjoy complimentary access to facilities at Fit’n Well next door to the hotel. One of the biggest leisure centres in Alsace, the complex has a huge gym, a spa with hammams and whirlpools, and a stainless steel swimming pool. [br[The hotel also has 3 restaurants.

Holiday Inn Strasbourg Illkirch is 10km from Congress Centre Strasbourg and 12km from the European Parliament. It’s also just 10km to Strasbourg train station, with a TGV link to Paris and connections to London.

Boat tours cruise along canals in historic Strasbourg’s picturesque Petite France area. Get a gargoyle’s view over the city from the Gothic cathedral’s tower, 6 km from the hotel, and hit the Alsace Wine Road for wine-tasting at local vineyards.

The Holiday Inn offers single and double rooms, smoking and non-smoking.

We need to tell Congress and the Administration that space exploration is a vital interest of the United States and that we should commit to landing humans on Mars by 2030.

Remember spending on Space Exploration is all about the salaries of the wonderful people that make space missions happen. And Mars is a hard one to reach.
Compared to the Russians who tried 21 times and never were successful, the USA has been doing fine in the last 10 years. Mars Odyssey satellite, Mars exploration Rovers Spirit & Opportunity (7 year extended mission already!) , Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter satellite, Phoenix Mars lander, and hopefully Mars Science Laboratory rover ‘Curiosity’.
But all those successes are in the people that drive and point the robots on and around Mars.

Thinking that talking to congress & senate is not for you?

Even if you have never spoken to a member of Congress before, please consider participating.  You can make a difference.  SEA will provide training on Sunday afternoon and you will be assigned to a team of approximately four people – every team will have experienced Blitz-people assigned to them. On Sunday afternoon 2 PM a training session will be held to prepare you thoroughly. You will find that talking on the Hill is not so scary after all. Believe me, my kids have done it when they were in their early teens, and they are n’t even Americans.

We will try to match you up with your own congress man / woman

and at the moment already 86 meetings have been confirmed. More will be set up when more people join.
Each team will have about 5 meetings on Monday and 5 meetings on Tuesday.
If you can only come 1 day, still consider joining us.
This is your chance to be heard by those that count.
Give government officials your opinion and tell them about  the importance of a humans-to-Mars mission in your lifetime!!

To meet your fellow Space blitzers informally before we send you up the Hill, there will be a special Blitz reception held on Sunday evening, February 26, 2012 (time and location TBA).  This reception is being held in partnership between the National Space Society and Explore Mars.

We hope to meet you in Washington, DC.

You can register in one of three ways:

(1) Go to the Space Exploration Alliance website

and click on the “more info and registration” link there;

(2) go to the National Space Society website   
and click on the “register” link there;

(3) use the following direct link to the registration page:

whatever method you use to register send Rick Zucker an email at rick.zucker@exploremars.org
or  508-651-9936

Note: The Space Exploration Alliance does not recommend any specific hotel to use for this event. Please find a local hotel that suits your needs.

The Space Exploration Alliance is an unprecedented partnership of the nation’s premier non-profit space organizations with a combined membership of  thousands of people throughout the United States.

Vision Statement:

The Space Exploration Alliance members believe in NASA’s bold and substantial mandate for human and robotic exploration of the solar system to assure American technological and scientific preeminence in the 21st century.

Mission Statement:

The nation’s premier non-profit space organizations will work together to communicate to the American public and elected officials that NASA’s bold and substantial mandate for human and robotic exploration of the solar system is a compelling national priority that is technically and fiscally achievable, will inspire the nation’s youth and the public, reinvigorate the traditional aerospace workforce and industrial base, and foster job-creating entrepreneurial activity across the entire economy.

Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, suggests using the ISS to train crews for the flight to Mars. They have proposed to expand the length of ISS expeditions to a year or even longer.  At present crews spend 6 months at the ISS. Longer expeditions on the ISS would provide for manned spaceflights beyond low-Earth orbit.

The ISS will stay in operation at least until 2020, and Rocosmos believes that the remaining time should be used to simulate long-duration interplanetary flights in orbit along with similar experiments on Earth.

Roscosmos’ manned flight programs director Alexei Krasnov stated that repeating the Mars500 experiment in real spaceflight conditions aboard the ISS would add valuable insights into the needs, technical and human, for a flight to Mars. Above all the life-support systems of the ISS need to be self-sustainable for a period of one year or more without extra parts being flown in from Earth.  For more info on this read the NASA facts_Environmental Control & Life Support Systems (ECLSS) of ISS

According to Alexei Krasnov “The use of the ISS not just for traditional research tasks but also to gain experience and knowledge needed for flights to Mars”.

NASA already proposed the use of the ISS to prepare for manned spaceflight to Mars at the ISS & Mars conference of April 2011 in Washington DC, that Explore Mars, Inc., organised.

In 2010 ESA send out a call asking for fresh and challenging ideas to expand the use of the ISS for exploring deeper space.statement. This would include on the use of the ISS for manned space flight beyond Earth orbit. This was the call that ESA send out: ESA call for proposals_ISS – a testbed for future space exploration_27 October 2010

However the point of view from the side of ESA on preparing manned space flight to Mars specifically is still unclear. This topic will feature on the next ISS & Mars conference by Explore Mars taking place in Strasbourg, France, 12-13 April 2012.

It is hoped that ESA will come aboard on this idea of the use of the ISS to prepare for human space flight to Mars.

The ground penetrating radar (MARSIS) has found evidence that Mars once had a Northern Ocean.
This can be read in an article by Jérémie Mouginot from the University of California in Irvine, Ca. , in  the Geophysical Research Letters, VOL. 39, L02202, 5 PP., 2012 doi:10.1029/2011GL050286. The title of the article reads:
 “Dielectric map of the Martian northern hemisphere and the nature of plain filling materials”

MARSIS found evidence of this ‘Oceanus Borealis’ when mapping the Vastitas Borealis Formation in the north of Mars. Vastitas Borealis consists of 100 meters thick sedimentary depots, which are right on top of deeper volcanic deposits.

MARSIS showed that this layer of upper sediments differs from the volcanic rock beneath them as they have a dielectric constant of 4 to 5 compared to the volcanic layer which has a value of 9 to 10. This is significant as the constant of the upper sediments are much closer to the value of pure ice which is 3.1. This points to a watery past for the upper layer of sediments as this low constant value can only be explained by the deposition of formerly watery sediments or sediments mixed with massive ice.

This late Hesperian ocean, a time period 3,000 million years ago (3Gy in geological speak) is an exciting idea as it regards the question of possible life at that time.
The big question has always been, if there was an ocean, where did all the water go?

MARSIS is answering that question too as its radar mapping shows that there are massive amounts of water ice buried beneath the surface. Not just at the poles of Mars but also within the shorelines of the old ocean as is now envisioned. The water ice is even closer to the equator than was previously thought. It is not unreasonable to conclude from this observation that the water from the ocean, and perhaps other seas or lakes as well, is still there, but frozen solid in our present time.

The idea that the water of Mars is still there, just in frozen form is actually born out by the findings of the Phoenix lander, which landed within the Vastitas Borealis Formation in 2008. Phoenix found water ice deposits only a few centimetres below the surface where it stood.

Cool colors map the location of surface materials with low dielectric constants, indicating where ancient ocean sediments may lie. Warm colors point to areas with high dielectric constants, such as the volcanic rocks of Elysium and the heavily cratered terrain in Noachis. Isidis is a small impact basin likely flooded by outflow channels or spillover from the northern ocean.
This image is Figure 2 from the paper.

It is very regretful that this Russian / Chinese Mars probe met with mishap. The Russians have been plagued by mishaps in Space launches lately. Since December 2010 Russia has lost 6 rockets during launch. Late August the third stage of the Proton rocket (a sister rocket of the Soyuz that just delivered crew 30 to the ISS) failed to burn properly and so failed to push the rocket and its progress supply ship out of Earth’s gravity well.  Today another Proton rocket failed to ignite its third stage properly, falling back to earth with its cargo.

That this is more than a little bit worrisome is clear, I would think. For the loss of the August Proton supply launch Russia sited a ‘bad fuel line to the third stage’. They assured the world that they had corrected this problem and therefore crew 29 and crew 30 were cleared for launch. After the December launch there will, no doubt, be another investigation.

What I would like to know is ‘Can the Russians guarantee flawless performance from now on?’.
A strange question, really, to pose to a nation that has been able to launch Proton and Soyuz rockets, one after another, for over 4 decades without a hitch. Is the workforce getting too old? Are the best people no longer working at Baikonur?  Do we need to wait for the Dragon + Falcon 9 to start its deliveries of goods and people to the ISS?
If so the launch and docking of the Dragon in early February 2012 is an event of even greater, even epic proportions than I was already thinking.

Please Baikonur set your record straight.

Please Space X show us that your are ready.

Either one would be good for human spaceflight. Personally I prefer for both to be true.

–  stay tuned –

This year’s Mars Education Challenge (2011-12) will be running for grades 7-12 lesson (plans).
If you want to enter a lessonplan for grade 6, please contact us.

Please remember to add all your personal data to your entry:
your name, address, email address, telephone number, grade the lesson is intended for, and the name and address of your school.

Your entry is due no later than January 31, 2012 at 12.00 p.m. EDT
you can send your entry in using the info @ exploremars.org email address
or by loading it up to this dropbox:
Http://Dropbox.yousendit.com/marseducationchallenge

Contact us for the particulars on this or for any other question you might have.

1. Lessons should use Mars (as an example) in your science lesson, while teaching the standard curriculum. Your entry can be one lesson, or several lessons. It can use technical equipment or simple pen and paper.
2. Abstract: You will need to send an abstract providing a general description of your curriculum support material. The main body of your curriculum support materials should be no longer than 5,000 words in length.
3. Your lesson(s) must be accompanied by 5 to 20 PowerPoint slides of your idea / your lesson(s).

The PowerPoint slides will also be put on the web to elucidate your lesson idea to your fellow science teachers.

4. Send in a letter from your school confirming that you teach at that school and indicating the science course(s) that you teach at that school. For retired teachers, if possible, send in a letter from your former school, if not: contact us about it.
5. Make sure you include your own personal contact information: name, private address, email address, telephone numbers, and school address

We are looking forward to your entries!

Over the next few months the orbit of the in tandem flying satellites will be lowered into a near-polar near-circular orbital altitude of about 34 miles (55 kilometers). The 82 day science phase will begin in March 2012. The scientific aim is to unterstand how the moon, Earth and other rocky planets evolved. To this end the moon’s gravity field will be mapped to high precision to deduce information about the interior structure, density and composition of the lunar interior. One of the questions that we want to be answered is whether the moon’s core is solid or liquid or a mixture and how it became the way it is now. On New Year’s Day  the winning names of a student essay contest will be revealed.

We hope that this auspicious start of the year will bode well for the upcoming marslanding.

www.issmars-europe.eventbrite.com

For conference attendess hotelrooms are available at €79 per room per night across the street from the ISU campus at the Holiday Inn Strasbourg-Illkirch.
Book before 15 March by calling the hotel and mentioning that you are booking for the ISS & Mars conference 12 & 13 April 2012. The ISU rate is €79  per room, per night +  1.50€ per person, per day for the city tax.

Holiday Inn Strasbourg-Illkirch
Boulevard Sebastien Brandt, Parc d’Innovation Illkirch, 67400 FRANCE
Hotel Front Desk: +33-388-408484

There are also a number of ISU affiliated hotels in the center of Strasbourg. Travelling from the center of the city to the ISU campus can be done easily by tramline A, tramstop ‘Campus Illkirch‘. A list of hotels will be posted on the website soon.

program (* 4 January 2012)

Wednesday April 11, 2012
7:00 pm – Reception (Tentative)

Thursday: April 12, 2012

9:00-9:50: Keynote speaker: Dr. Reinhold Ewald (ESA – Operations Manager, Columbus Control Center; Astronaut) tentative

10:00-11:30: What are the challenges to human exploration of Mars?
Dr. James Garvin (NASA – Chief Scientist, Goddard Space Flight Center- tentative) and Dr. Bruno Gardini (ESA) – tentative

11:30-1:00: Lunch

1:00-2:20: ISS as a test bed Missions beyond LEO and on to Mars.
Moderator: Sam Scimemi (NASA – Deputy, International Space Station)
Patrick Sunblad (ESA)
George Nelson (NASA)
Diego Urbina (Mars500)
Mike Rodriggs (NASA)
Matt Duggan (Boeing)
Jordon Metcalf (NASA)

2:30-3:50: Transitioning from ISS to Exploration
Moderator: Mark Kinnersley
(Astrium – Director of Business Development; Orbital System and Exploration Division)
Michael Menking (Astrium)
Kathy Laurini (NASA)
Ed Hodgson (Hamilton Sundstrand)
Chris Sallaberger (MDA)

4:00-4:45: Day 1 Afternoon Speaker: Berndt Feuerbacher (President, International Aeronautical Federation)

evening program

7:00 pm: Yuri’s Night/ISU 25th Anniversary Gala Reception
Speaker: Jean-Jacques Dordain (Director General, ESA – tentative)

Friday April 13, 2012

9:00-9:50: Franklin Chang Diaz (Ad Astra Rocket Company; Former NASA Astronaut) – Tentative

10:00-11:30: What projects can be launched in the next 2-5 years in Cis-Lunar Space
Moderator: Ulrich Kübler
(Astrium – Senior Manager Business Development Head of ISS Utilization Office)

10:00-11:30: What projects can be launched in the next 2-8 years in Cis-Lunar Space
Joe Cassady (Aerojet) tentative

11:30-1:00 - Lunch

1:00-2:20: Moving Beyond LEO: What missions can be accomplished in the next 10-20 years?
Moderator: Michael Raftery (Boeing – ISS Deputy Program Manager)
Kirk Shireman (NASA)
Chris Sallaberger  (MDA)
Maria-Antonietta Perino (TASI)
Mark Kinnersley (Astrium)
Josh Hopkins (Lockheed Martin)

2:30-3:50: The ISS Partnership as a governance model for international human missions beyond LEO and eventually to Mars
Moderator: André Farand (ESA)
Kathy Laurini (NASA)

4:00-4:45: Closing Speaker- Walter Peeters (President, International Space University)

evening program
6:00 pm: Dinner (speaker)
Speaker: Franklin Chang Diaz - Tentative