On April 15, President Barack Obama will visit Florida to host a White House Conference on the Administration’s new vision for America’s future in space, the White House today announced. The President, along with top officials and other space leaders, will discuss the new course the Administration is charting for NASA and the future of U.S. leadership in human space flight. Specifically, the conference will focus on the goals and strategies in this new vision, the next steps, and the new technologies, new jobs, and new industries it will create. Conference topics will include the implications of the new strategy for Florida, the nation, and our ultimate activities in space.

More than two dozen simulations in Facing Mars, a new exhibit at the Pacific Science Center, give visitors an idea of what it would be like to make the three-year round trip to the red planet. Are we there yet? Isolation, monotony, boredom. How will it feel to be away for months or years from all you have ever known? People can step into the confinement chamber and begin to experience the isolation and boredom astronauts would experience on the trip. The Mars Walk simulates what it would be like to walk on the surface of Mars. At the Bring Mars to Life station, visitors can create a stop-motion animation of their vision of pioneer life in a Martian colony

In August 1999, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Advanced Projects Design Team (Team X) studied a robotic mission to determine the ages of the volcanic and sedimentary rock layers in the walls of Valles Marineris, the great martian canyon system. The Mars Stratigraphy Mission (MSM), as it was called, would see a lander similar to that planned for the 2001 Mars Surveyor Program lander mission leave Earth atop a Delta 7925 rocket in April 2007 and land on Mars in October 2009. It would steer itself to a precision landing at 14° south latitude, 68° west longitude, no more than 10 kilometers from the Valles Marineris southern rim. The MSM lander would deploy a specialized rover with three spherical inflatable "wheels." Throughout the surface mission, the solar-powered rover would communicate with Earth via a communications satellite in equatorial Mars orbit. The rover would need no more than 50 days to travel to the canyon rim. Once there, it would anchor the end of a tether to the ground and, paying out the tether behind it, rappel into the six-kilometer-deep canyon.

Tonight we talk about this weekend’s Mars and Moon duets visible to the unaided eyes. The planet Mars buzzes Beehive star cluster Saturday evening and on Sunday morning the crescent Moon pairs up with Antares.

Sky-watchers who routinely gaze at Mars observed an abrupt change in the appearance of the planet's arctic zones. "Over the weekend (Jan 30-31) a dust stream appeared," said Pete Lawrence of Selsey, UK, "and it is cutting across Mars' north polar cap." He photographed the activity through a telescope as seen above. The bright white area is the polar ice cap of Mars which is composed of a surface layer of frozen carbon dioxide, and vast amounts of water ice beneath. Notice that in the rightmost image, the land mass is obscured. This is evidence of an enormous dust cloud.

Even with February weather there will be a few good stargazing evenings so be certain to take advantage of them. Mars is perhaps the best naked-eye target, shining brightly high in the east as soon as the sun sets. Mars is a giveaway because it does not twinkle but shines with an orange hue. February is an excellent time to visit your local astronomy club so you can learn more and get prepped for the clearer, warmer months to come.

Mars is the fourth planet from our Sun in the Solar System. Out of the various planets and moons in our Solar System, Mars perhaps bears the most similarity to Earth, featuring an atmosphere, polar ice caps, and remnants of tectonic activity on the planet’s surface. Mars has fascinated both astronomers and the general public for years, and has been the subject of countless movies and fiction works. Currently, several nations in the world are planning to send missions to Mars for exploration, and NASA’s Spirit Rover recently ended a 6 year exploration of the surface after becoming trapped in sand.

Last week, it was recipes. This week, it's finance. And Mars. The Bing team has partnered with the Pacific Science Center in Seattle to teach kids about Mars. And, it seems, teach kids to use Bing at the same time. Microsoft's "Captain Mike's Mars Adventure" site was launched in conjunction with the "Facing Mars" exhibit opening Saturday at the Science Center. On the Web site, kids have to answer questions about Mars by searching on Bing. The goal is to tell Captain Mike enough about Mars so he can go on his space mission.

This weekend promises two very special "close encounters" with our nearest neighbors. Planetary scientist Barbara Cohen at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center will answer your questions online via a a live Web chat on Friday, January 29, 2010 from 3:00-4:00 EST to field questions about Mars at Opposition and the "largest" full moon of the year.

"Earth or Mars?" That's the question posed to visitors as they enter Pacific Science Center's new exhibit, "Facing Mars," a question that has two sides to it. The first involves personal inclination: Which planet would you rather be on? Visitors vote their preference by choosing between "Earth" and "Mars" gates as they enter the exhibit. (At the exit, after you've seen the displays, you can vote on the question again.) The second concerns powers of perception: A widescreen TV flashes image after image of arid terrain. The photographs are captionless for 8 seconds, allowing visitors to guess whether it's Earth or Mars they're seeing. The answer, when given, is almost always a surprise. The Atacama Desert, sand dunes of the Sahara and McMurdo Dry Valley of Antarctica can look awfully Mars-like to the untrained eye.

On Jan. 27, Mars will be closer to Earth than any other time between 2008 and 2014. A mere 60 million miles away, the red planet will be a great target for backyard telescopes, and will appear bright to the naked eye as well. Every 26 months, the two planets’ orbits bring them closer together, sometimes closer than others. In 2003, Mars came within 35 million miles of Earth, a 60,000-year record. Observers with a telescope will be able to see changes over the north pole of Mars as the carbon dioxide ice cap is nearing summer and evaporating into gas that affects the polar clouds.

If you’ve been outside after it gets dark lately, you may have noticed the brilliant reddish star in the east. But that’s no star; it’s Mars! About every year and a half, the Earth passes Mars as they both orbit the Sun, very much like how a faster racing car on the inside track laps a slower-moving car on the outside track. When Earth does lap Mars, the Red Planet’s on the opposite side of the sky from the Sun, rising at sunset and setting at sunrise — we say that Mars is at opposition when that happens. When it does, we get two advantages in one: it’s at its closest point, so it’s bigger in telescopes, and it’s up all night so you can observe it at your convenience. This happens next in just a few days, on January 29, 2010. That’s why the Beauty Without Borders program has set up a Mars observing campaign, to get everyone outside and looking at Mars. If you are part of a local astronomy group, let them know about the campaign, which lasts from tonight, January 25th, through the 30th. Get folks to attend and see Mars through a telescope! It won’t be terribly big like you might see in space probe pictures, of course, but you may catch the polar ice caps, or some other features.

Every summer there’s misleading e-mail that circulating about how on Aug. 27 Mars will be as close as it’s been to Earth in 60,000 years and will be as big as a full moon. Some folks have fallen for it, grabbing lawn chairs, mosquito juice and over inflated high hopes to see this momentous event, and … nothing happens. Just another pleasant evening under the stars. The annual Mars hoax is based on a real event that did take place on Aug. 27, 2003, when Mars was the closest it’s been to Earth in 60,000 years. It was a great event, but by no means was Mars as big as a full moon, not even close. This month Mars will be the closest it’s been in more than two years. Astronomers call it opposition, and it happens when the Earth and another planet are lined up with the sun, with the Earth in between the sun and the planet.

The 2010 opposition of Mars happens on January 29. You want to see the planet Mars, right? Sure! Everyone does! About every two years, Mars suddenly becomes much more noticeable. That’s already happening as I write this, in mid-January of 2010. Mars’ brightness has increased, and it is appearing in the sky for more hours of the night now than it has for the past couple of years. In late January of 2010, Mars will be at its best for this two-year period. The chart below shows Mars on January 29, when it will be near the full moon. You’ll find Mars every evening now in the east by the time true darkness falls. By late January, Mars will be ascending in the east immediately after sunset. In February, it will be in the east already when the sun goes down. Mars is reddish. It shines steadily. Look in the east any evening now, and you’re likely to notice it!

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