By Dr. Robert Zubrin, Nautilus, 05.12.21 In the late afternoon of May 5, SpaceX’s Elon Musk tweeted, “Starship landing nominal!” Musk is not known for understatement. But seeing that stainless steel behemoth soar was, for many, something more like phenomenal. Over 5 million people watched the spectacle on YouTube, perhaps many with bated breath, as every prior attempt at landing Starship had gone up in flames. Not SN15. This Starship, after having climbed 12 kilometers and then coasted down in a “belly… READ MORE >
Topic Area: The Moon
The 23rd Annual International Mars Society Convention, an online virtual event involving some of the world’s top leaders and experts on Mars and space exploration, begins tomorrow (Oct. 15th) and runs through Sunday (Oct. 18th). With 150 speakers and over 5,000 people registered to attend, the four day global conference will bring together key scientists, commercial space executives, government policymakers and space advocates to discuss the latest scientific developments and challenges related to the exploration of Mars and the eventual… READ MORE >
The Mars Society is very pleased to announce that Jim Bridenstine, NASA Administrator, will be joining us virtually during the 23rd Annual International Mars Society Convention on Saturday, October 17th at 10:00 am PST (1:00 pm EST, 18:00 GMT) to give an update on “NASA’s plans for the Moon and Mars.” Mr. Bridenstine assumed the leadership of NASA in April 2018 and quickly launched an initiative to renew lunar exploration via the Artemis program, with plans to land the first… READ MORE >
The Mars Society is pleased to welcome Yonatan Winetraub, Co-Founder of SpaceIL, a $100 million Israeli non-profit organization that attempted to land Beresheet, the first private interplanetary robotic mission, on the Moon in April 2019, as a virtual speaker during the 23rd Annual International Mars Society Convention, scheduled for October 15-18. Established in 2011, SpaceIL was founded to answer the international challenge presented by Google Lunar XPRIZE – to build, launch and land an unmanned spacecraft on the Moon. In… READ MORE >
By Robert Zubrin & Homer Hickam, Washington Post, 06.22.20 The success last month of the SpaceX Dragon’s flight to the International Space Station was the first time in nearly a decade that Americans traveled into space aboard an American vehicle launched from U.S. soil. That is important, but we think the flight actually means even more. This commercially developed spacecraft has given our nation the means to carry crews to the moon — and perhaps beyond — much faster and cheaper than has… READ MORE >