Guests: Chris Carberry, Joe Cassady. Topics: ExploreMars.org and projects ExoLance & Time Capsule, Mars life detection experiments. Please direct all comments and questions regarding Space Show programs/guest(s) to the Space Show blog, http://thespaceshow.wordpress.com. Comments and questions should be relevant to the specific Space Show program. Written Transcripts of Space Show programs are a violation of our copyright and are not permitted without prior written consent, even if for your own use. We do not permit the commercial use of Space Show programs or any part thereof, nor do we permit editing, YouTube clips, or clips placed on other private channels & websites. Space Show programs can be quoted, but the quote must be cited or referenced using the proper citation format. Contact The Space Show for further information. In addition, please remember that your Amazon purchases can help support The Space Show/OGLF. See www.onegiantleapfoundation.org/amazon.htm. For those listening to archives using live365.com and rating the programs, please email me as to why you assign a specific rating to the show. This will help me bring better programming to the audience. We welcomed back Chris Carberry, Executive Director of ExploreMars.org and for the first time Joe Cassady to discuss current and new ExploreMars.org projects including the ExoLance Mission and the Time Capsule. During the first segment of this 90 minute program, Chris provided us with a brief overview of ExploreMars.org, then he got into the specifics of their new project, ExoLance. For more information about it and the crowd funding financial program, see www.indiegogo.com/projects/exolance. Both Chris and Joe spent most of this segment with the details of this mission which will flyto Mars on an existing NASA or ESA Mars mission in the 2020s, dropping up to six tungsten penetrators loaded with life detection experiments to penetrate the Martian surface by up to 1-3 meters. Our guests answered many emails as well as phone questions including specifics about the penetrators, the locations they would search, the tungsten penetrators serving as ballast on the main spaceflight missions, the impact velocity, and much more. Chris and Joe several times referenced the work of Dr. Gil Levin for his labeled release (LR) experiments on the Viking missions, plus the work of Dr. Chris McKay at NASA Ames. Both are key to designing the mission and scientific instrumentation for the penetrators. I hope you find this detailed discussion as interesting as I found it. In the second segment, we talked about other ExploreMars.org projects including the student led Time Capsule. For more information, visit www.timecapsuletomars.com. According to the website, the Time Capsule project sends to Mars digital messages from tens of millions of people from all corners of Earth in the form of text, images, audio and video clips. This will Enable tens of millions of people from every country on Earth to upload their pictures, short movies, text messages and other digital media to the time capsule for about $1.00 for 10 mb. Joe and Chris described the project, the student leaders behind it, and they invited all to participate. Later in the segment, our guests talked about the next Humans2Mars conference scheduled for early May 2015. They also talked some about this year's conference and the many people that attended it plus the thousands of others around the world who saw it via streaming. As you will hear, more than a thousand schools worldwide logged in to see the speakers as well. Clearly, going to Mars gets people's attention around the world like nothing else in the space field. We got an email about possible ITAR issues with the crowd funding program and I asked our guests for Plan B if life was not discovered by the penetrators. You might find their response to this question interesting, perhaps even entertaining. Several listeners suggested some more advanced technology for the penetrators but the guys want to keep the first round very simple and affordable. Based on the success of the first round of penetrators, they might evolve for future experiments. Please post your comments/questions on TSS blog above. You can reach either guest through ExploreMars.org or me.
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The Space Show
