First Information Circular: MEPAG Meeting February 16-17, 2005

Letter of Invitation

Members of the Mars community,

I invite you to attend the next meeting of the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG), scheduled for Wednesday-Thursday, February 16-17 at the Hyatt Hotel in Arlington, Virginia. Although the final agenda has not yet been set, for the purpose of travel planning assume that the meeting will begin at 8 AM on Feb. 16 and end at approximately 3 PM on Feb. 17. If you choose to catch the evening flight home on Feb. 17, I encourage you to stay through the concluding discussions.

Goals for this meeting

Over the past several months, MEPAG has had joint science-engineering teams (SSGs) working on questions that have been put to it in two primary areas: 1). Mars sample return, 2). Preparation for human exploration (revision of MEPAG Goal IV). It is important that the analyses of these two SSGs be discussed and validated by a larger set of people. Thus, I specifically encourage members of the community with interests in these areas to attend. In addition, this meeting will take place during the Mars Roadmapping process, and we will be prepared to devote a portion of the agenda, as appropriate, to this topic.

This meeting is important, and I hope you can attend. If there are any specific requests for time on the agenda on matters of general interest, please correspond with either me or Dr. David Beaty by Jan. 5, 2005, when we plan to assemble the final agenda.

Sincerely,

Dr. Bruce Jakosky

MEPAG Chair

Basic Logistics

• Dates: Feb. 16-17, 2005. Start at 8 AM on Feb. 16, end at 3 PM on Feb. 17.
• Location: The Hyatt Arlington (1325 Wilson Blvd., 703-525-1234), in the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area. The hotel is located 4 miles from Washington National Airport (DCA), 23 miles from Dulles (IAD), and 0.2 miles from the Rosslyn Metro station. Georgetown is a 1.5 mile walk across the Key Bridge.
• Lodging: The Hyatt has reserved 70 rooms for MEPAG at the government rate of $153. Rooms have free high-speed Internet service. The Web site is http://arlington.hyatt.com/property/index.jhtml. Other hotels very close by include the Best Western, Holiday Inn, and the Residence Inn.

If you need additional logistical information, please contact Terry Martin, MEPAG meeting coordinator, Terry.Z.Martin@jpl.nasa.gov, phone = 818-354-2178, FAX = 818-393-4619. For comments concerning the agenda, please contact Bruce Jakosky, the MEPAG Chair (Bruce.Jakosky@lasp.colorado.edu) or David Beaty, Mars Program Science Manager (David.Beaty@jpl.nasa.gov). If the master MEPAG e-mail list needs to be updated (either correction of faulty e-mail addresses, addition of Mars science colleagues who have been inadvertently omitted), or deletions, please contact Debbie Calderon at Debbie.Calderon@jpl.nasa.gov.