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Showing posts from May, 2009

FMARS training

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To prepare for my upcoming mission to "Mars", I have to make sure I'm prepared for living in remote arctic conditions. This includes knowing how to safely handle a gun in case we run into polar bears, how to drive an ATV, first aid, and being physically fit. In this post, I'll share some pictures from my training activities so far. First, let's set the mood with some music ... This past weekend, film crews documented all six FMARS crewmembers doing training activities in Florida, Texas, and Hawaii. The idea was to capture the personalities of the crewmembers during our pre-expedition preparations. The footage will be used to produce a short promotional video to pitch the idea to Discovery network executives. Assuming they give the project a green light, a film crew will join us for the arctic mission and shoot video for a 2-hour special on the Discovery Science Channel . You can see some pictures of them interviewing me here.     I spent Sunday

ESA Announces 6 New Astronauts

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ESA has just announced its six newest astronauts: Samantha Cristoforetti (Italy), Alexander Gerst (Germany), Andreas Mogensen (The Netherlands), Luca Parmitano (Italy), Timothy Peake (UK), and Thomas Pesquet (France) (Mrs. Simonetta Di Pippo, ESA Director of Human Spaceflight also show in center of photo below). They're the first European astronauts selected since 1992 to the European Astronaut Corps . Note that the selectivity is 6 out of 8413 applicants = 0.071%, not 0.048% as I previously estimated . Congratulations!

FMARS update

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It's official. The Mars Society has announced this summer's FMARS mission. We will be the twelfth crew to call the remote outpost home since it was founded in 2000. The Mars Society news release is below: Return To FMARS: Crew Selected For Mars Society Expedition To Devon Island The Mars Society today announces the selection of six crew members, chosen to take part in a month-long Mars simulation on Devon Island in the Canadian arctic. This will be the twelfth crew to inhabit the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS), conducting a sustained program of field exploration while operating under Mars mission constraints. The simulation, conducted throughout the month of July, will provide the opportunity to conduct a range of research projects focused on understanding the technical and human factors which may be faced by the first human Mars explorers. The 2009 FMARS expedition will be led by Commander and Chief Geologist Vernon Kramer of Del Mar College (Corpu

CSA Announces 2 New Astronauts

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CSA has just announced its two newest astronauts: Jeremy Hansen and David Saint-Jacques . They're the first Canadian astronauts selected since 1992 and are the 11th and 12th members of the Canadian Astronaut Corps . Congratulations! We can expect the European astronaut announcement from ESA next week . NASA's announcement probably won't be too far behind.

New CSA, ESA, and JAXA Astronauts

Mark your calendars for May 13 and 20. That's when Canada's CSA and Europe's ESA will announce their new astronaut selections. In a press release earlier today, CSA said it would announce its two new astronauts on May 13. Back in March, I reported that CSA released a great deal of information on the top 16 astronaut candidates in its recruitment campaign. This included biographies of the top 16 candidates and video and photos of their evaluation and testing. CSA has been very good with keeping the public informed through the astronaut selection process with regular posts to its website . I liked how CSA was able to interview a relatively large pool of applicants remotely via teleconference, which is something NASA did not do. As I reported in a previous post , CSA had 5352 applicants for only 2 slots. This makes CSA's selectivity 2/5352 = 0.037%! May 13 Update: CSA has announced its two newest astronauts David Saint-Jacques and Jeremy Hansen . Congrat