Earlier this month, I had the privilege of hosting the first Occupy Mars seminar at Wolfson College, Oxford. I was joined by several speakers from around the university and further afield to discuss what it will take to get humans to Mars one day.

For the benefit of those who were not able to make the seminar, I have uploaded audio recordings from each of the speakers and the panel discussion at the end. Several of the speakers have contributed their slides and I have uploaded them as well where possible.

Simon Evetts

Simon led the Medical Projects & Technology Unit at the European Astronaut Centre, Cologne, supporting the health of European astronauts. Since leaving the EAC, Simon has taken on the role of Space Operations Director for Blue Abyss, what will be the world’s first commercial astronaut training facility. He has been instrumental in developing the field of space biomedicine in the UK over the last 15 years, co-founding the UK Space Life & Biomedical Sciences and UK Space Environments Associations in support of this cause. He is a Visiting Senior Lecturer at King’s College London, Visiting Professor at Northumbria University, a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society and co-founder of the Human Spaceflight Capitalisation Office at Harwell.

Simon presentation slides

Brian Yeomans

Brian is based at the Oxford Robotics Institute, where he leads the space robotics efforts. He has been part of the core MURFI (Mars Utah Rover Field Investigation) team, where he was the platform lead. Based in the Utah desert, this was only a few hundred metres away from the MDRS (Mars Desert Research Station)

Colin Wilson

Colin is a researcher based at the Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics group at the University of Oxford studying Mars and Venus. He has designed, built and tested instruments flown on various spacecraft, landers and rovers. Colin also is active in outreach and manages the local Oxford Space Network.

Akash Trivedi

Do I really need an introduction here?

Akash presentation slides

Lucy Kissick et al.

Lucy is a DPhil student in the Department of Earth Science at the University of Oxford researching Martian lakes on a NERC research programme. At the seminar she was joined by her team of undergraduate students who were assisting the research that I took part in at the MDRS. Lucy is also active in outreach and has her own YouTube channel.

Lucy presentation slides

Panel Discussion

Questions were saved until the end of the seminar so that they could be posed to multiple people and a wider discussion could be had. Unfortunately, Brian had to leave us earlier, so his questions were taken directly at the end of his talk.

 

If you were unable to join this seminar, I hope you find these audio clips and presentation slides informational, and I look forward to seeing you at the next one!