UPDATED: Fri, Jul 15, 10:21AM Long before the rescuing of Mark Watney became a cultural phenom, Mars and martians had captured the imagination of comic book and science fiction authors. For almost a century and a half, fictional visits to the red planet have been made by humans like John Carter and superhumans like Superman, Dr. Manhattan, and Dr. McNinja. Some, like the Martian Manhunter (J'onn J'onzz) even call the fourth planet home. In this panel, Marshall Smith (Deputy Director, Cross-Program Systems Integration, ESD at NASA), Joseph Cassady (executive director, Space at Aerojet Rocketdyne), Grant Anderson (president & CEO at Paragon Space Development Corporation), William D. Pratt (Program Manager, Lockheed Martin's Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP)), Patrick O'Neill (Marketing & Communications Manager at Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS)), Matthew Duggan (Space Systems Manager, Boeing Company), Rebekah Sosland Siegfriedt (Systems Engineer, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory), and moderator Steve Broback (cofounder, Dent the Future) discuss the latest developments in the commercial and government partnership driving the 2035 mission to Mars.
