MDRS Crew 23
February 1 - 14, 2004

During the active field season, the crew of the Mars Desert Research Station rotates every 2 weeks. These are the scientists and engineers who live and work on site within the MDRS. They explore all of the facets of human exploration in a simulated Mars environment. The MDRS will be active for a 7 month period.

Name	Speciality
John Karafilis	Commander
Dusty Samouce	Engineer
Steve Jalim	Professional Journalist
Ákos Kereszturi	Crew Geologist
Anne Pacros	Engineer
Tia Grenman	Astrobiologist

John Karafilis	I am a US citizen currently living on the island of St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands. I have a BS in Electrical Engineering from Penn State, and worked for 2 years as a VLSI chip designer for IBM. I am now an independent computer contractor. Because of unexplained delays, and our government's lack of direction, I feel that now is the time for the average Joe, like myself, to step up to the plate to make "real" space exploration a reality in our life-time. My immediate MDRS goal is to take in the experience as a whole, learn from it, and make a realistic determination of where or how I can best contribute to the overall project. In the meantime, I'd consider it both an honor and a privilege if I could help advance any of the work currently proposed by my more accomplished Crew 23 partners.
Dusty Samouce	Dusty Samouce graduated from NC State University in 1960 with a BS degree in Nuclear Engineering and a commission in the Marine Corps. After seven years in the USMC he joined NASA at the Manned Spacecraft Center (now Johnson Space Center) in Houston, TX where he served as Apollo Checklist Manager, Apollo/Shuttle space suit test subject, Skylab Flight Controller (GNC), Shuttle/Space Station Test Director (ECLSS & TCS). After retiring in 1991, Dusty moved to the Bitterroot Valley in western Montana, where he has been involved with wildlands fire fighting, bicycle touring, Nordic Ski Patrol, and Search and Rescue. He is currently the Manager of the Samouce Solar Facility where he operates an optical solar telescope, a solar monitoring radio telescope and a muon particle detector system. Dusty was the Commander of Crew 8 at MDRS.
Steve Jalim	Steve Jalim is a journalist on assignment from the UK popular science and technology magazine Focus. In addition to aiding the rest of Crew 23 with their projects and writing daily news updates for the Mars Society website, he will be putting together a large report on the Mars Society and its simulations. A journalist for six years and a big fan of science and science fiction, Steve worked on national car magazines, as well as a number of PC and videogame magazines before finding his niche at Focus. Along the way he found time to earn a Masters in Computer Science - a little in contrast to his bachelor's degree in French and German. As well as feeling extremely fortunate to be able to play a role in researching the future of human space exploration, Steve is also looking forward to growing a beard, some of which he suspects might turn out to be ginger.
Ákos Kereszturi	Ákos Kereszturi is a geologist with degree in geology and geography currently PHD student in Eotvos Lorand University of Sciences and Polaris Observatory in Hungary. He has a strong interest in planetary geology, above all the surface evolution of Mars, presence of water and astrobiology - but in other fields like the ice crust of Europa, subsurface of Titan, NEOs and Kuiper objects... also. He is working for the Hungarian Astronomical Association as journalist, writing articles related to news in astronomy, planetary sciences and some books on popular astronomy. His hobby is amateur astronomy and visual observing.
Anne Pacros	Anne Pacros was born in France and has been interested in human spaceflight since high school and her dream is to be an astronaut some day! After her undergraduate studies in Engineering at Ecole Centrale Paris, France, she obtained a Master of Science in Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Then she started her professional life back in France at Snecma Moteurs, working on VINCI, the future upper stage engine for the Ariane 5 rocket. She joined the French Chapter of the Mars Society ("Planète Mars"), where she now participates in activities about safety, medical aspects and motivations of human missions to Mars.
Tia Grenman	Tia Grenman is a second-year PhD student at the Luleå University of Technology, Sweden. Her research area is astrobiology, in particular extra solar planets and the probability of finding life in extreme environments, like on Mars, Europa and Titan. She was born in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. She came to the Sweden in 1990, and in 2002 graduated as an MSc in Space Engineering. She has always been interested in space exploration and hopes that one day we will fly to Mars and beyond. But before that we need to learn about human behaviour in extreme environments. Therefore it is so important to perform ground simulations.