Geoffrey Briggs received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Durham, England. He worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California as a science investigator on the Mariner 9, Viking Orbiter and Voyager imaging teams.

From 1977 to 1990, he worked at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC, first as deputy director and then as director of NASA's Solar System Exploration Division. This period included the launch of the Pioneer Venus missions, the Pioneer 11 encounter with Saturn, the Voyager launch and encounters with Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, the start of the Mars Observer and Cassini missions and the launch of Galileo, Ulysses and Magellan.

He is currently the scientific director of the NASA Ames' Center for Mars Exploration, which was formed in 1992.

Sam Burbank is a film maker and writer based in San Francisco, California. His work, focusing on ecology, science, and space exploration, has allowed him to travel the world. His clients include National Geographic, Discovery Channel, and PBS, and he is the founder of Inverse Square Films.. Sam, following Frank Schubert, conducted the first-ever Mars analog EVA from the Mars Arctic Research Station on Devon Island, Nunavut, Canada.

Sam studied creative writing at SFSU, during which time he co-founded a championship motorcycle roadracing team. He is an advanced SCUBA diver, a snowboarder (with the broken ribs to prove it), and he loves to cook. Soon after marrying, he and wife Linda rode a motorcycle to the arctic circle. He is a founding member of the pop band The Birdwatchers, though he is currently on loan to the Mars-hab band, The Extremophiles.

Agustin Chicarro is science officer for Mars Express, ESA's Mars mission for 2003. As Project Scientist, Agustin Chicarro monitors the design and development of the scientific instruments that will fly on Mars Express. His job involves not only making sure that work is progressing on schedule, but also that the scientific return of each instrument will fulfil its scientific objectives.

Chicarro's personal route to Mars began in Madrid, Spain where he was born on 23 July 1956. After studying biology, chemistry and geology at undergraduate level, he went on to a masters degree in geology, followed by PhD in "compressive tectonics of Mars" at the University of Paris in Orsay. He then spent three years at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, where he conducted research on the geology of Mars, the Moon and Mercury. After continuing research in Madrid and teaching at universities in Taipei, Taiwan for three more years, he joined ESTEC in 1988 where he studied proposals for future missions to Mars and the Moon before becoming Mars Express Project Scientist.

Chicarro's hobbies are reading, photography and travel. He speaks English, French and Spanish fluently and has a smattering of Russian, Japanese and Dutch.

Bill Clancey is Chief Scientist, Human-centered Computing at NASA Ames Research Center. Previously, he was at the Institute for Research on Learning in Menlo Park, CA from its founding in 1988 until 1997.

Clancey received a BA in Mathematical Sciences (BA) from Rice University in 1974 and a Ph.D. in Computer Science at Stanford University in 1979.

He has published five books, including: Knowledge-Based Tutoring (1987), Contemplating Minds: A Forum for Artificial Intelligence (1994, with S. Smoliar and M. Stefik), and Situated Cognition: On Human Knowledge and Computer Representations (1997). He has presented tutorials and keynote addresses in eighteen countries.

Clancey was crew member at FMARS on Devon Island and also at MDRS in Utah, where he was commander of crew 5.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke is one of the most influential sciencefiction writers of the twentieth century. Known by a large audience primarily because of his script for Stanley Kubricks "2001, a Space Oddyssey", his list of novels, short stories and non-fiction is much longer. Among his most famous books are "Songs of Distant Earth", "Childhood's End", "The City and the Stars" and "The Sands of Mars".
Clarke is widely recognized as the true inventor of the communications satellite and wrote about solar sailing as early as 1964.
Sir Arthur has always shown a big interest in Mars; not only did he use the planet as setting for novels and short stories, he also set to terraforming the planet with VistaPro software, in his book "A garden on Mars". He recently spend a lot of time studying photographs by Mars Global Surveyor.

Frans von der Dunk is Co-Director of the International Institute of Air and Space Law at Leiden University (since 1990), and has been Assistant Professor in Public International Law since 1987. He defended his dissertation on "Private Enterprise and Public Interest in the European 'Spacescape'" in 1998, has written over 60 articles and papers, and has given over 60 presentations and guest lectures on subjects of international space law, international air law and+ public international law around the world.

Dr. von der Dunk has served as adviser to the Dutch Government, the European Commission, the European Space Agency (ESA), the United Nations, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the German Space Agency on a number of issues related to space activities (space policy, privatisation of space activities, GNSS, satellite communications, radio astronomy, earth observation).

Dr. von der Dunk is Director and Treasurer of the International Institute of Space Law (IISL), Member of the Board of the European Centre for Space Law (ECSL), and Alternate Member for the Netherlands in the International Law Association's (ILA) Committee on Space Law. Further memberships include: International Academy of Astronautics (IAA; Corresponding Member), International Bar Association's (IBA) Section on Business Law and Committee Z on Outer Space Law (Publications Officer), American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA; Senior Member), and Centro de Investigacion y Difusion Aeronautico-Espacial (CIDA-E; Corresponding Member).

Pascale Ehrenfreund was born in Vienna, Austria, where she studied both astronomy and biology. After graduation in 1988 she went to France where she worked at the University Paris VII and for CNES, the French space agency. She has worked at Leiden Observatory since 1994. With substantial funding from the Dutch government she has build up in 2001 an Astrobiology laboratory at the Leiden Institute of Chemistry. The main focus of this laboratory is to study extraterrestrial samples, chemical pathways on Solar System bodies and prebiotic chemistry. Ehrenfreund did research on the stability and evolution of organic molecules on the Martian surface and their implications for extinct and extant life on Mars. Other research topics include interstellar chemistry, interstellar and solar system ices and organic molecules in comets and meteorites. In 2001 she received the Pastoor Schmeitsprijs for her pioneering research in astrobiology. She is the proud "owner" of a piece of interplanetary real estate: asteroid 9286 Ehrenfreund.

Louis Friedman has been involved with space programs for almost 40 years. From 1970 to 1980 he worked on deep space missions at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. Among the projects he has worked on are: navigation systems analysis for Mariner-Venus-Mercury and for the Grand Tour, and mission design studies for the Venus Orbital Imaging Radar, Halley Comet Rendezvous-Solar Sail, and the Mars Program. He was the leader of the latter three programs, as well as the manager of Advanced Planetary Studies at JPL. Dr. Friedman is the author of more than 20 papers on Navigation, Mission Analysis and Design, and Mission Planning.

In 1980, together with Carl Sagan and Bruce Murray, he founded the Planetary Society, a non-profit, popular society for enhancing the exploration of the planets and the search for extraterrestrial life. The Planetary Society is now the largest space interest organization in the world. Dr. Friedman is the author of Starsailing: Solar Sails and Interstellar Travel. While at The Planetary Society, Dr. Friedman has worked on the proposal for human exploration of Mars and published several papers on this subject. He has also been part of the technical team working on the Mars Balloon. Dr. Friedman frequently lectures about planetary missions and space exploration programs.

Charles Frankel studied planetary geology at Middlebury College (Vermont) and the University of Arizona. His areas of expertise are Martian geology, volcanism, and impact cratering. Now a writer and lecturer in Paris, he has authored science books in both French and English, including Volcanoes of the Solar System (1996) and The End of the Dinosaurs: Chicxulub Crater and Mass Extinctions (1999) at Cambridge University Press. Mr. Frankel was crew geologist on board the Mars Society's Arctic Research Station (F-MARS, Devon Island) during the summer of 2001. During the fall of 2002, he will command a similar mission in the Society's Mars Desert Research Station in Utah.

Giorgio Gaviraghi graduated in Architecture at Milan Polytechnic in 1968 and did post graduate management courses at NYU in 1982. He was associated with aerospace and airport projects as designer and project manager (wide body final assembly plant, military and commercial aircraft overhauling facility, several airports ) for major world companies as well as advanced industrial design projects in several countries. He founded Pianeta Marte, an organization whose main goal is to propose innovative designs to the world industry. Currently more than one thousand innovative proposals,  including a few truly revolutionary concepts, are in the pipeline. Among those are pAstroHut, an extraterrestrial construction system for the assembly of space stations in other bodies utilising local materials as well as several new concepts of space development such as the deflected asteroid as cycler for affordable Moon or Mars missions. Gaviraghi presented several papers at major aerospace conventions and is currently working in two books, Space development and Designing the future, that include most of the new theories. He's also the author of a science fiction book, First Contact.

Inge Loes ten Kate studied Aerospace Engineering at Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, from 1993 till 1999 and fulfilled an internship at Arianespace in 1998. In 1999 she made her thesis project on aerocapture around Mars, at the University of California, Irvine. In 2000 and 2001 she worked on GalileoSat at the Dutch National Aerospace Laboratory NLR. Since 2001 she works on her PHD research on complex organics on Mars at the University of Leiden. Ten Kate is also one of the founding members of the Dutch chapter of the Lunar Explorers Society.

Andre Kuipers received a Medical Doctor's degree from the University of Amsterdam in 1987. During his medical studies, Kuipers worked in the Vestibular Department of the Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where he was involved in research on the equilibrium system.

Since 1991, he has been involved in the preparation, coordination, baseline data collection and ground control of physiological experiments developed by ESA for space missions.

In July 1999, Kuipers joined the European Astronaut Corps based at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany. He is scheduled to spend some time in the International Space Station somewhere in the next few years.

Gerard Kuijpers is a business consultant who deals primarily with projects for change and improvement in organisations. His expertise stretches from financial and business organisation and ICT to people's skills. As an internationally certified trainer of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and a Master Hypnotherapist he has allways been fascinated by the vast potential of the mind and the many different aspects of motivation. His great passion for the quest that lies ahead makes that Gerard is constantly searching for new ways to get people interested and motivated.

Markus Landgraf holds a position as staff Mission Analyst with the European Space Agency and is President of the German Chapter of the Mars Society. He graduated in high energy physics and obtained his PhD in astrophysics from the Max-Planck-Institute for nuclear physics in Heidelberg. He also carries a private pilot license including an instrument rating issued by the US Federal Aviation Association. In his science carrier Markus completed two postdoc projects in the field of cosmic dust research, the first of which was a follow-up research at the Max-Planck-Institue in Heidelberg and the second a one-year fellowship with the National Research Council at the Johnson Space Centre of NASA in Houston. In the summer of 2002 Markus spend three weeks at Devon Island as crew member of FMARS.

Pascal Lee is a planetary scientist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, CA, and the Principal Investigator of the NASA Haughton-Mars Project (HMP) at NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, CA.

Pascal was born in Hong Kong in 1964, grew up in France, and came to the United States in 1989. He holds an Ingénieur degree (ME) in Engineering Geology and Geophysics from the University of Paris (1987), a MS in Astronomy and Space Sciences from Cornell University (1993) and a Ph.D. in Astronomy and Space Sciences from Cornell (1997).

Pascal's research interests focus on Mars, asteroids and impact craters. He is particularly interested in the geologic history of Mars, the history of water on that planet, and the geologic and physical conditions allowing life to arise and evolve on planets. He often visits the Earth's polar regions and deserts for Mars analog studies. In 1988 he wintered over in Antarctica for 14 months at Dumont d'Urville Station as station geophysicist. In 1995-96 he was a field team member on the US Antarctic Search for Meteorites (ANSMET) Program. In 1998 and 1999 he was field scientist for the NASA / Carnegie Mellon University Robotic Antarctic Search for Meteorites (RAMS) Project.

In 1997, while a National Research Council postdoctoral Research Associate at NASA Ames Research Center, Pascal Lee initiated the NASA Haughton-Mars Project, an international multidisciplinary field research program focused on the Haughton impact crater site and surroundings, Devon Island, Nunavut, Arctic Canada, viewed as a Mars analog. The HMP investigates possible parallels between the Earth and Mars, in particular in geology and astrobiology, and conducts field studies of the technologies, hardware designs, strategies and human factors relevant to the future exploration of Mars by robots and humans.Pascal Lee has led all HMP expeditions to date.

Pascal is also a founding member of the Mars Society, and a thriving force behind the Society's program of Mars Analog Research Stations.

Volker Mang is an analyst of utilisation requirements for European Space System provider Astrium. He mediates between user community and the engineers' world of space systems.

Dr. Mang studied Chemistry & Microbiology. After an initial study for DLR concerning the commercial aspects of a bioprocessing downstream technique, he joined the space industry. He initiated, developed and operated several sounding rocket experiments and was involved in numerous space system studies. In an intermediate period, he worked on the restoration of former military sites. Since 2000 his focus is the identification of the utilisation aspects of Mars exploration and the possibilities to extend the promotion for Mars missions in Germany.

He is member of the German Chapter of the Mars Society and leads the build-up in the Bremen region. Special focuses are the Bremen Events in 2003 in preparation and accompaniment of the European convention 2003.

Bo Maxwell is president of the Mars Society UK. He co-owns a small Scottish-based business consultancy firm and works as a freelance consultant in the IT industry. He has been responsible for the set-up and commissioning of some of the largest data centres in Europe (catering for up to 50,000 servers). He has been lecturing in space exploration for some 15 years, and is a former member of the British Interplanetary Society. As a member of the Management Team he has overseen key aspects of Euro-MARS project management and development, including serving on the Design Team and Scouting Mission Team.

Franco Ongaro is coordinator of the Advanced Studies and Concepts Office of the European Space Agency. After studying electrical engineering aeronautics in his hometown Milano, Italy, he started working for ESA in 1987. He worked at the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, the Netherlands for six years and in 1994 went to Paris to to join the ESA Directorate of Strategy and Technical Assessment.

In 1991 Ongaro was selected by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) as one of the five Italian astronaut candidates for a European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut selection.

Vladimir Pletzer is Senior Physicist / Engineer at ESA/Estec in Noordwijk, The Netherlands, where he has been working since 1985. As ESA's Parabolic Flight Project Manager, he made over 3000 parabolic flights, with a total of 16 hours of weightlessness. He was involved in hundreds of scientific experiments in biomedical and materials research. In 1991 he was selected candidate astronaut for Belgium and in 1995 he was selected as payload specialist on a shuttleflight for NASA's Life and Microgravity Spacelab. In 2002 Vladimir Pletzer was crew member of Mars Desert Research Station where he conducted an experiment with the growth of plants and herbs and it's effect of the crew's well-being.

Marc Salotti received a Ph.D. in computer science from the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble, France, in 1994. He is now Associate Professor at the University of Bordeaux, France, and is doing research in the Laboratory of Cognitive Science.  He has been working in computer vision and pattern recognition for 10 years with application in robotic vision, biomedical image processing and remote sensing. He is also interested in the human exploration of Mars. He graduated with the Master of Space Studies from the International Space University in July 2002 and is currently leading the Marsbase project which aims at developing a game showing the first stages of the construction of manned bases on Mars.

Frank Schubert 's first career was in music as guitar player in rockband Devo. After saying goodbye to the Californian music scene he went to Colorado for something completely different: architecture. When in the summer of 2000 things seemed to go terribly wrong with the construction of the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station on Devon Island, he came to the rescue of the project. As leader of a diverse crew consisting of Inuit, journalists and Mars Society members he managed to overcome the loss of the floor panels and a crane. Schubert is project manager of the Society's second habitat, the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah, which was completed in early 2002. Recently he worked together with a team of architects from several European countries on the interior design for the European Mars Analogue Research Station.

Piet Smolders is one of the Netherlands foremost space journalists and has been for a very long time. Even before the launch of Sputnik in 1957, he launched his own small rockets. In 1958 he published his first newspaper article and thousands of articles have been published since then in national and international media. He wrote 45 books about spaceflight and space exploration and made dozens of documentaries for both Dutch and German television. For almost 15 years he was manager of the Artis Planetarium in Amsterdam. He was the first journalist in the western world to write a book about Russian spaceflight, which was published in both Dutch and English. Smolders, who speaks Russian, visited the Soviet Union, and later Russia, more than one hundred times. He was awarded the Gagarin- and Glushko-medals. He is a member of the Russian Space Academy, fellow to the British Interplanetary Society and honourable member of the Dutch Space Society

Hans Starlife has been active within public space popularization all his life. His main interest and expertise lies in the Social and Cultural field. He also works to visualize the fundamental naturalness of Life's expansion in the universe, and promotes the use of international space cooperation as a tool in peace education.

In the 80's, Starlife co-founded Sweden's first space advocacy group and represented The Planetary Society and other internationally active groups. Often described as an Agent of Change, he has been featured in numerous articles and interviews in the media. In 2000, he attended the Millennium Forum conference at the United Nations headquarters as the only delegate from the space community.

Today, Hans Starlife is the Coordinator of the Cosmica Network, an international alliance of visionary people working for a broader, cultural and interdisciplinary space agenda. He also co-owns an international trading & marketing business, considers himself a true World Citizen, and enjoys art, botanic gardens and other cultures.

Kees Veenenbos has, in recent years, become the Netherlands' national space-artist. He uses Terragen rendering software and Mars Global Surveyor's MOLA data to create stunning images of past and present Mars. Encouraged by the recent discoveries of waterice or even liquid water he visualized a Red Planet on which large area's are covered with water and mud. His work has been published by national and international media such as De Volkskrant, Science, Courrier International, Bild der Wissenschaft and Space.com. Many of his images can be admired at his website space4case.

Jim Volp graduated in Infrared Astronomy at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands in 2001. He then persued the Masters of Space Programme at the International Space University. He choose the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston for his internship where he studied a region on the Moon known as Central Oceanus Procellarum using multispectral data from the Clementine spacecraft under the guidance of Dr. Paul Spudis. Jim is currently working for the European Space Agency as a Young Graduate Trainee on the SMART-1 satellite that will be launched to the Moon in 2003. Jim is a very active person. He is the driving force behind the Lunar Explorers Society and the Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC) in support of the United Nations Programme on Space Applications. He also is involved with the European Alumni Association of ISU (EAA), Yuri's Night (global celebration of human achievements in space) and is one of the webmasters of the Nederlandse Vereniging voor Ruimtevaart (NVR).

Arno Wielders has been fascinated by the Universe, and especially manned spaceflight, since his childhood. when one night he stayed up till dawn to see the Giotto-probe encounter Halley's comet. Besides that he's always had two other passions, castles and football and he still enjoys playing indoor soccer. Nevertheless he chose a career in science as he went to Amsterdam's Free University to study physics. After graduation he worked for Leiden University and Fokker Space to work on the Very Large Telescope, a project that uses multiple telescopes to obtain a very high resolution signal. Since 2000 Arno works at TNO-TPD in Delft on space projects like the Ozone Monitoring Instrument OMI. In november 1999 Arno co-founded the Dutch chapter of the Mars Society and he's been it's chairman ever since.

Robert Zubrin is founder and inspirator of the Mars Society. In 1998 he initiated the founding of the Society to further the exploration and settlement of Mars by both public and private means.

Dr. Zubrin was employed in areas of thermonuclear fusion research, nuclear engineering and radiation protection before turning to astronautics.

Formerly a Staff Engineer at Lockheed Martin Astronautics in Denver, he is now president of his own company, Pioneer Astronautics, based in Lakeside, Colorado. He holds Masters degrees in Aeronautics and Astronautics and a doctorate in Nuclear Engineering.

He is the inventor of several unique concepts for space propulsion and exploration. As a reaction to NASA's 1989 Space Exploration Initiative, Zubrin proposed a much cheaper and more affordable approach, Mars Direct, which took advantage of local resources on the planet. NASA has since then integrated his proposals in it's Design Reference Mission.

Zubrin wrote about his ideas about Mars exploration in great detail in his book, "The Case for Mars - the plan to settle the Red Planet and why we must". He put down his vision about how mankind could become a spacefaring civilization in "Entering Space" and also wrote a novel about the first Mars mission, "First Landing".

Zubrin frequently lectures about Mars, the Mars Society and Mars Direct. As a former high school science teacher, he knows how to explain complicated matters to a large audience.