The Martian Garden Team recently had the opportunity to attend the 20th Annual Mars Society Convention. Established by Dr. Robert Zubrin in 1998, The Mars Society is the leading advocacy and support group promoting the manned exploration of Mars. The annual convention draws some of the best people that the Mars community has.

This was our first time attending the Mars Society Convention, and it definitely won't be our last. The Mars Exploration community runs the gamut of academics, the aerospace industry, students, entrepreneurs, students, astronauts, and enthusiasts. It's an eclectic mixture of people from all walks of life that have one thing in common: they all want to see humanity explore Mars.

Each day, we'd select which presentations were the most interesting to us during the day, which of several plenary speakers, debates, or panels were the can't miss event of the evening, and spend some time hopping between booths and chatting in the exhibition hall. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see as much as we would've liked, as we were practicing for our own talk on Saturday.

We shared our paper, "Mars Regolith Simulant as a STEM Education Resource", along with about 100 kits. In the next few weeks we'll be able to post a video of our presentation. Stay tuned!