Prior to our big Dent: Space event coming to San Francisco in September, we are excited to again be hosting several science and tech panels at San Diego Comic-Con in the main expo hall. Final date and times to be be published very soon, but here is what we will be discussing onstage in just a few weeks.

Mars Needs People: Putting Humans on the Red Planet

Long before the rescuing of Mark Watney became a cultural phenom, Mars and martians had captured the imagination of comic book and science fiction authors. For almost a century and a half, fictional visits to the red planet have been made by humans like John Carter and superhumans like Superman, Dr. Manhattan, and Dr. McNinja. Some, like the Martian Manhunter (J’onn J’onzz) even call the fourth planet home.

In this panel, Rebekah Sosland Siegfriedt (Systems Engineer, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory), Marshall Smith (Deputy Director, Cross-Program Systems Integration, ESD at NASA), Matthew Duggan (Space Systems Manager, Boeing Company), Joseph Cassady (executive director, Space at Aerojet Rocketdyne), Grant Anderson (president & CEO at Paragon Space Development Corporation), William D. Pratt (program manager for Lockheed Martin’s Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP) and Patrick  O’Neill (Marketing & Communications Manager at Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), will discuss the latest developments in the commercial and government partnership driving the 2035 mission to Mars.