The 3rd landing site workshop for the 2020 Mars Rover mission will be held at the Doubletree Hotel, Monrovia, CA, on February 8-10, 2017. Presentations are solicited on the science merits of the eight remaining candidate landing sites for the Mars 2020 mission. The full second announcement/call for presentations, workshop logistics, and a request for registration can be found at the meeting page. See prior meeting pages1 to view presentations from those meetings, including science presentations and information about how the 2020 engineering constraints relate to these eight (and other) candidate 2020 landing sites.
The primary goal of the third workshop will be to further evaluate the eight candidate landing sites that emerged from the second workshop and reduce the number of candidate sites remaining under consideration to three or four. Evaluations at the Workshop will employ the framework provided by existing data for Mars (e.g., MRO), the science requirements of the 2020 mission, and a better understanding of the 2020 engineering requirements and traversability of the landing sites relative to these requirements. Presenters at the workshop are expected to make a comprehensive, persuasive talk on why a specific site is the right one for the 2020 mission and payload, including how and where the science objectives of the mission can be accomplished.
Persons wishing to make a presentation at the workshop should submit the title of their talk to John Grant and Matt Golombek by January 13, 2017. We request that persons planning to attend register by January 31, 2017 at this link2 to aid with logistics.
A hotel block has been arranged at the workshop venue: DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Monrovia – Pasadena Area, 924 West Huntington Drive, Monrovia, California, 91016, USA +1-626-357-1900. To book a room at $159/night (plus taxes and fees) during February 7-12, please call and reference the “JPL-MEPAG” meeting, or reserve a room via this url3.