Speaker for Feb 21 General Meeting

Our speaker is Earl White, Vice-president of the Mars Society of Australia.  He will talk about a Mars Simulator for Australia:

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.