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The Planetary Society65 N. Catalina Avenue,
Pasadena, CA 91106-2301(626) 793-5100
Fax (626) 793-5528
E-mail: [email protected]
Web: https://mail.nycboe.net/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://planetary.org <https://mail.nycboe.net/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://planetary.org/>

For Immediate Release: May 22, 2008
Contact: Susan Lendroth, 626-793-5100 ext 237

First Interplanetary Library Will Land on Mars

The Planetary Society Will Celebrate with Events Across the US. The Planetary Society's Visions of Mars DVD aboard Phoenix will land on Mars on May 25, 2008. This first of NASA's Scout missions is led by Principal Investigator Peter Smith at the University ofArizona. Attached to the deck of the Phoenix lander, the DVD includes a collection of 19th and 20th century science fiction stories, essays and art inspired by the Red Planet, as well as the names of more than a quarter million inhabitants of Earth."A Message from Earth to future Martian explorers, this DVD is The Planetary Society's gift to those who will someday expand the human presence to other worlds," said Louis Friedman, Executive Director ofThe Planetary Society, who conceived the idea for Visions of Mars."We hope astronauts will one day retrieve this first Martian library and enjoy the visionary works and good wishes sent from our time to theirs."PHOENIX LANDING EVENTS To celebrate this milestone, The Planetary Society has teamed with science centers and planetariums across the country to offer special events where the public can gather to share the excitement of the Marslanding. The centerpiece event will be held in Pasadena, California:Planetfest 08 New Visions of Mars. Already sold out, Planetfest 08 will host more than 700 participantsat a day-long celebration that includes watching the landing live onthe big screen, talks by Mars experts, and selected readings fromVisions of Mars. Speakers will include Bill Nye the Science Guy andscience-fiction legend Ray Bradbury. Additional events will be held inSeattle, Chicago, Phoenix and Cleveland, to name a few of theparticipating cities.

For a complete listing, visithttps://mail.nycboe.net/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://planetary.org/explore/topics/planetfest08/phoenix_events.html.VISIONS OF MARSVisions of Mars "the first library on Mars" contains materials that represent 20 nations and cultures. Visions of Mars includes works byThe Planetary Society's co-founder Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, RayBradbury, Kim Stanley Robinson, Arthur C. Clarke, Percival Lowell andmany more. Visit https://mail.nycboe.net/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://planetary.org/phoenixdvd for more informationand to view some of the images.Phoenix will be the first lander to explore the Martian arctic,touching down near 70 degrees north latitude. Designed to search forand study water ice, the spacecraft is a fixed lander with a suite ofadvanced instruments and a robotic arm that can dig half a meter intothe soil. The Phoenix team hopes to uncover clues in the icy arcticsoil about the history of near surface ice and the planet's potentialfor habitability."For more than a century, Mars has beckoned, inspiring tales of wonderand adventure," remarked Bruce Betts, Director of Projects for ThePlanetary Society. "Many men and women who now work in the spaceprogram first turned their eyes to the sky because of the childhoodwonder kindled by the astronomical artists and science fiction authors featured on Visions of Mars."The disk will appear in some of the calibration images that Phoenix takes to adjust its cameras, so people may be able to see it on theMartian surface.The library should be able to last at least 500 years on Mars, so there will be plenty of time for a future generation to discover andenjoy the works included on the DVD.Putting a spacecraft safely on Mars is hard and always carries risk.This will be The Planetary Society's second attempt to send Visions ofMars to its namesake planet. It was originally created by the Society to ride aboard Russia's Mars'96 spacecraft, which failed shortly after launch.The Phoenix mission is led by Principal Investigator Peter H. Smith ofthe University of Arizona, with project management at NASA's JetPropulsion Laboratory and a development partnership with LockheedMartin Space Systems.

WEBLINKS:The Planetary Society https://mail.nycboe.net/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://planetary.org <https://mail.nycboe.net/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://planetary.org/>
Visions of Mars http://www.planetary.org/programs/projects/messages/vom.html
Phoenix Landing Events https://mail.nycboe.net/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://planetary.org/explore/topics/planetfest08/phoenix_events.html

Karen Markey is a faculty member in the School of Information at the University of Michigan. Earlier this year, she received a small grant from the Delmas Foundation to build a prototype online board game that teaches students information-literacy skills. Her game prototype is now fully operational and is being tested and evaluated by a class of 75 undergraduates at the University of Michigan.

They’ve just finished conducting interviews with student game players, but they haven’t had sufficient time to mull over interview data and analyze game play logs. They already recognize that the incentive for playing the game is a critical issue and future games must be intimately connected to a class assignment or project.

Because Karen wants to do something that would scale beyond Michigan, she is looking for research partners at public or academic libraries who are interested in building on her foundation, expanding what they have already done, and testing her approach with their library patrons. Her intent is to find libraries who want to collaborate on an IMLS National Leadership grant to host a unique instance of the game that is customized to achieving their information literacy objectives.

The game is based on the “search strategy” model that Tom Kirk and his Earlham College colleagues devised to teach undergraduates how to do library research. Karen chose the “Black Death” for the prototype game’s topic, and they are learning from their evaluation other topics that college-age students prefer.

Here are some links to learn more about their approach:

1. Information on their Storygame Project generally: http://www.si.umich.edu/~ylime/storygame.html
2. Playing-the-game video at YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u76tW-ne-yY
3. Manual for playing the game: http://ics.umflint.edu:3904/manual/manual.html

If you’re interested in partnering with Karen, you can contact her at ylime [ at ] umich.edu. I can’t wait to hear more about this project and watch it develop.