General Meeting: Speaker: - Vice President of Mars Society - Earl White

On the 3rd Tuesday of the month (February to November) at 7:30pm, we meet on Zoom or at Regis Hall in the grounds of St Ignatius College, Riverview Street, Riverview (Lane Cove) which features a presentation from a Guest Lecturer. These presentations generally focus on the theoretical aspects of Cosmology, Astrophysics and Astrophotography and can include some of the most up-to-date research and scientific findings. We are fortunate to be able to obtain speakers from Australia’s top universities and scientific community – our past Guest Lecturers have included the likes of Dr Fred Watson and Nobel Prize winner Prof. Brian Schmidt. Our speaker this month is Earl White, President of the Australian MARS Society.

The format of the evening consists of a welcome to Members and Visitors, a quick discussion on general business of NSAS, the presentation from our Guest Speaker and then members usually stay and have a chat with a cup of tea or coffee.

These meetings are an excellent opportunity to get to know fellow members.

Synopsis of this month's presentation.

The Mars Society Australia is building a Mars mission simulator at Arkaroola in the South Australian outback. Why on Earth would they want to do this?

Human analogue training for surface activities goes back to the Apollo era.  These early simulations were aimed at learning to use equipment and move around in spacesuits. Training for a crewed mission to Mars will need much more as astronauts will be on the red planet not just for a few days like the longest Apollo mission, but rather for many months on end. They’ll have to master the art of living and working together on another planet.  Discovering how to do this has been underway for decades and now such a training facility is coming to Australia

This presentation will go over the recent history of human surface mission training facilities like the MDRS (Mars Desert Research Station) in Utah and its impact on popular culture, scientific results and some famous former crew members including multiple astronauts. We’ll cover why the Australian outback is an ideal place to learn how to live on Mars and what’s being built here. It will also offer opportunities for getting involved in the project.

About the presenter:

Earl White is an executive director and vice-president of the Mars Society Australia, the local chapter of the Mars Society which is the world’s largest and most influential space advocacy organisation dedicated to the human exploration and settlement of the planet Mars. Earl has been fascinated with space and astronomy all his life, has formal post graduate qualifications in astronomy and after several decades of both sales and technical roles in IT, has ended up working at a little ol’ telescope shop called BINTEL.

More into:

 See attached project overview technical docs.

 https://mars.marssociety.org.au/