The Second Landing Site Workshop for the 2020 Mars Rover mission will be held at the Doubletree Hotel, Arcadia, CA, on August 4-6, 2015. The full text of the Second Announcement, workshop logistics, and a request for registration has been posted at: http://marsnext.jpl.nasa.gov/.

The primary goal of the second workshop will be to evaluate the ~30 candidate landing sites that emerged from the first workshop as well as any new sites proposed. We are soliciting presentations on the science merits of candidate landing sites for the Mars 2020 mission — Presenters at the workshop must make a comprehensive, persuasive talk on why a site is the right one for the 2020 mission and payload, including how the science objectives of the mission can be accomplished and (where possible) an assessment of how the surface characteristics meet the engineering criteria so that each site can be comprehensively and fairly assessed. Presentations are also solicited on the surface characteristics of the landing sites and how well they conform to the engineering requirements.

All members of the scientific community are encouraged to participate in the Mars 2020 site selection process. We will also be using Adobe Connect again to webcast this workshop, as was done for the 1st 2020 LS Workshop (information to be provided in the 3rd announcement).

Sincerely,
John Grant and Matt Golombek
Co-Chairs, Mars Landing Site Steering Committee