Mars and the Mojave Festival

Mars and the Mojave Festival, March 9 -11, 2012. Featuring scientist and National Park Service interpreter guided field trips to analog sites, evening keynote speakers and panels, star-gazing, and an expo including mini-rover demonstrations and a 1/10th-scale model of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity Rover. Co-sponsored by NASA Ames Research Center, the Death Valley National Park, the SAM Team at NASA Goddard, and the SETI Institute. Lucinda Land, Executive Director of the Mars Society, will be in attendance on behalf of the organization. NASA festival information Program photo credits for this photo - Steve Hall, Mars Hill and NASA. NPS festival information

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Dr. Rosalba Bonaccorsi (left) is an interdisciplinary scientist working at NASA Ames Research Center. In 2001 she obtained her Ph.D. in Geological, Marine and Environmental Sciences from the University of Trieste (Italy). Since 2005 she has expanded her interest to the habitability of mineralogical Mars analogs, and very dry desert regions worldwide, including the Mojave, Antarctica, Atacama (Chile), and Australia, often as a NASA Spaceward Bound team member. Rosalba joined the SETI Institute in 2008, and is keen to achieve a wide picture of where life and its signatures are most successfully distributed, concentrated, preserved, and detected. Since 2008, Rosalba has been working in Death Valley on the Ubehebe Volcanic Field. In collaboration with NASA scientists, she is applying results from this research to Mars Science Laboratory mission objectives. Formerly a teacher, she has been involved with Education and Public Outreach with non-profit organizations since 1989.

NASA MARS SETI SAM MARS ANALOG mars hill universe rover rosalba bonaccorsi susanne douoglas andrea jones chris mckay tyler nordgren aaron zent stephanie kyriazis nasa goddard nasa ames seti institute badwater ubehebe death Valley research planets astronomy