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Hello Subscriber!

This is the last time in 2019 I write to you as the editor of this newsletter. December traditionally is a time of looking back at the past year and looking forward to the new year. This year we put our first small steps as the Mars Society Netherlands. We got our organisation running, aired our website and social media accounts, and published six newsletters, including this one. But the end of the year also brought us a little setback. Sadly we had to postpone our first public event last month, the discussion meeting at the observatory in Overveen, due to our dependency on them. But let us not be mournful for too long. This month will bring a next opportunity to meet us: the excursion to Kunsthal Kade in Amersfoort I wrote about last month. More about that further on in this newsletter.

Next year will certainly bring much exciting news about the exploration of Mars. Both ESA and NASA will launch their rovers to the red planet's surface. The Mars Society Netherlands will keep you updated about their progress, in this newsletter and on the website. We're also planning to organise a range of activities where we can meet and exchange views. We'll certainly schedule a new discussion meeting in the first months of next year. More information on that will follow in the next newsletters. Make sure not to miss them! 

Activities

A short reminder: we will go on an excursion to the exhibiton One way ticket to Mars in Kunsthal Kade in Amersfoort on saturday December 15^th 2019.  We will gather in front of the entrance of the Kunsthal at 2.00 PM. Please let us know that you'll join us by sending an email to info@marssociety.space.

Further News:

	The landing site for NASA’s Mars 2020 rover might be home to fossilized life Two new studies raise the possibility that the next Mars mission will find fossils of organic life or preserved biosignatures at Jezero crater.
	IKEA is designing shelves for life on Mars Who will decorate Elon Musk’s house on Mars? Perhaps IKEA. The Swedish furniture company appears to be the first of its kind to tackle the issue of how we’ll create inviting living spaces in the cramped quarters some of us will find ourselves in on Mars.
	10 Things: Grand Canyons Each year, millions of visitors pour into Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. The world-famous vacation destination celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2019. Meanwhile, on another nearby world, another giant canyon awaits its first visitor. Valles Marineris, or the Mariner Valley, is often called the Grand Canyon of Mars. How do the two compare?
	Mysterious oxygen spike seen on Mars puzzles scientists AFTER MORE THAN six years sniffing the red planet’s thin, frigid air, a NASA rover has made a startling discovery: There’s more oxygen gas in the Martian atmosphere than scientists expected, and what’s there is behaving strangely.