Cornell astronomy professor Steven Squyres will speak to members of Congress at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C., Friday morning, May 8, on future plans for the exploration of the Red Planet.

Speaking at a Congressional breakfast hosted by the Planetary Society, in collaboration with the House subcommittee on space and aeronautics, Squyres will give the politicians and their staffs an overview of NASA's Mars exploration program. Squyres is the principal science investigator for the Athena Mars Rover on NASA's Mars 2001 mission.

Squyers and Louis Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society, will also discuss future missions in the Mars Surveyor program, including missions to return Martian rocks and soils to Earth by 2005. Squyres will also describe the Cornell-designed instrument package that will be carried on the 2001 Rover mission to conduct analyses of the Martian surface.

The Planetary Society was founded in 1980 by the late Cornell astronomer Carl Sagan with Friedman and Bruce Murray, professor of planetary science at the California Institute of Technology, to advance exploration of the solar system and to continue the search for extraterrestrial life. With 100,000 member in more than 100 countries, it is the world's largest space-interest group.