45 – Coming Together for Mars (feat. Jeff Johnson)

Play Episode (57:16)

Missions to Mars don’t happen by accident. A ton of planning goes in long before the spacecraft is even selected. Understanding the consensus wishes of the scientific community is critical to putting resources into the right missions, and one group that helps gather that consensus is the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group. Jake is joined by Jeff Johnson, planetary scientist from Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab and the current MEPAGC hair to talk about how MEPAG works and everything that it does.

(note: in the interview, you may hear Jeff mistaken identify himself as the Goals Chair. He is in fact, the MEPAG Chair)

We Talk Mars Program Analysis and the Decadal Survey

• The MEPAG Goals Document (2015)
• The 2013 Planetary Sciences Decadal Survey

Previous Coverage of Mars Policy

• Episode 27: The Policy of Mars (feat. Casey Dreier)

Follow Jeff and MEPAG

• Jeff’s Profile at JHUAPL’s Website
• MEPAG Website (JPL)
  • MEPAG Committee Members

Follow Jake & WeMartians

• Website (www.wemartians.com)
• Patreon (www.patreon.com/wemartians)
• WeMartians Shop (shop.wemartians.com)
• Twitter (@we_martians)
• Facebook (@wemartians)
• Instagram (@wemartians)
• Jake’s Twitter (@JakeOnOrbit)
• The Off-Nominal Podcast

WeMartians music is “RetroFuture”, “Electrodoodle”, and “On My Way” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

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