{"id":4560,"date":"2012-03-07T11:42:04","date_gmt":"2012-03-07T19:42:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/?p=4560"},"modified":"2012-03-07T13:31:56","modified_gmt":"2012-03-07T21:31:56","slug":"red-planet-mars-festival-this-weekend-in-death-valley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/red-planet-mars-festival-this-weekend-in-death-valley\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Planet (Mars) Festival This Weekend in Death Valley"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"img\" src=\"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/images\/deathvalley.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"922\" height=\"456\" \/><\/p>\n<p>DEATH VALLEY NATIONAL PARK, CALIF.&#8211;A new event sponsored by National Park Service\u00a0 (nps.gov) invites the public to Death Valley this weekend to study the similarities between Planet Earth and Mars.\u00a0 &#8220;Mars and the Mojave Festival&#8221; held March 9-11, 2012 includes three exciting days of exploration with guest lectures, expos,\u00a0 give-aways, field trips and night telescope viewing of planets at Furnace Creek Airport.<\/p>\n<p>The barren landscape of Death Valley (shown in photos above,) almost devoid of vegetation, evokes the red planet&#8217;s surface.The dry, but not completely rainless climate is similar to conditions on Mars three billion years ago. Other-worldly features like the Badwater salt flat and Ubehebe Crater embody the extreme environments in which scientists seek the building blocks of life on other planets.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"img\" src=\"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/images\/marsmo.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"492\" height=\"296\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Mars Festival includes:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>FRIDAY, MARCH 9, 2012<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Curiosity on Mars, by Dr. Chris McKay from NASA Ames Research Center, a member of the Mars Science Laboratory team.<\/li>\n<li>Telescope viewing of Mars, Jupiter, and other astronomical objects.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>SATURDAY, MARCH 10, 2012<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Mars Science Laboratory NASA mission instruments and experiments from Curiosity Mars Rover.<\/li>\n<li>Scientist-hosted field trips to analog sites Mars Hill and Badwater salt flats.<\/li>\n<li>Expo on the lawn of the park&#8217;s newly renovated Visitor Center with NASA centers, universities, and non-profit organizations.<\/li>\n<li>Mini-Curiosity Rover demonstrations, scientist talks, and free souvenirs.<\/li>\n<li>Lectures and an evening panel with in-depth perspectives on planetary research in National Parks and around the globe, as well as a discussion about the relevance of space science.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>SUNDAY, MARCH 11, 2012<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Field Trip to Ubehebe Crater.<\/li>\n<li>Talk on the future of planetary exploration, on earth and beyond.<\/li>\n<li>Lecture from research expert<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For more information, contact Death Valley NP Education Specialist Stephanie Kyriazis at (760) 786-3226. If you can&#8217;t make it out to the desert for this event, be sure to consider taking a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/petroglyph-tours-china-lake\/\">petroglyph tour at China Lake<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DEATH VALLEY NATIONAL PARK, CALIF.&#8211;A new event sponsored by National Park Service\u00a0 (nps.gov) invites the public to Death Valley this weekend to study the similarities between Planet Earth and Mars.\u00a0 &#8220;Mars and the Mojave Festival&#8221; held March 9-11, 2012 includes three exciting days of exploration with guest lectures, expos,\u00a0 give-aways, field trips and night telescope [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[29],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4560"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4560\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}