Suited for Mars: An Advanced Spacesuits Symposium.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 20, 2005

"Suited for Mars: An Advanced Spacesuits Symposium."

Imagine you're 5 kilometers from the habitat module on Mars and your
spacesuit has just sprung a leak which will kill you in a few minutes.
You really need a repair kit fast. Fortunately you have one and your
partner on the EVA applies a fabric cuff made with contractile polymers
that with a flip of a switch quickly seals the leak.

Currently we use have no spacesuit built for traversing rough terrain
on planetary surfaces which is light enough, can be use for weeks and
is field serviceable. The only spacesuits designed, built and used for
surface exploration on another planetary body have been the 12 Apollo
A7L's and A7LB's used on the Moon's surface six times for just a few
hours each. They were truly works of great genius but after only a few
hours of use they showed signs of wear. The Moon has very abrasive dust
and the bearings which allowed free wrist movement began to show signs
of failure as dust got into the works.

To address spacesuits designed issues the Mars Society will launch the
first annual Advanced Spacesuits Symposium. With the advances in
relevant technologies, such as smart fabrics, electroactive polymers
and the demands of the president's new vision for space exploration
comes a time to look again at the spacesuit. To protect a human on the
surface of a planet a spacesuit must be as complicated as a manned
spacecraft making it the most critical piece of human to machine
interface hardware possible. Any future surface spacesuit design needs
to successfully operate hundreds of hours in dusty environments. This
places demands on future spacesuits, which will far exceed the Moon
Suits capabilities.

"Suited for Mars: An Advanced Spacesuits Symposium" will take place
Friday the 12th of August 1 PM to 5 PM at the 8th International Mars
Society convention that will be held at the University of Colorado,
Boulder, August 11-14, 2005.

Aerospace professionals from throughout the industry who have worked on
or are simply interested in advanced spacesuit concepts are invited to
attend this symposium where we plan to gather all the major players in
the field.

Deadlines: 31 May 05 (abstract) / 12 August 05 (full paper)Abstracts
should be sent via email to

The Mars Society was founded in 1998 and is a nonprofit organization
that promotes the goal of human exploration of the Red Planet.
Currently the Mars Society operates two research facilities. Flashline
Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS) located on Canada's Devon Island
in the Arctic Circle and the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS)
located in the desert southwest of the United States. The Mars Society
has chapters and membership worldwide.

For more information about the Mars Society, or to register for the
conference, visit www.marssociety.org/