PLANETCAST: THE OFFICIAL WEBCAST OF PLANETFEST '99 ONLINE

The Planetary Society
Cynthia Kumagawa (tps.ck@planetary.org)

Using the latest Internet technology, The Planetary Society's PlanetCast will bring Mars to Earth. Internet users will witness the touchdown of the Mars Polar Lander and hear the first-ever sounds from the Red Planet through PlanetCast, the online broadcast of Planetfest '99, a three-day festival of space exploration taking place in Pasadena, California, from December 3-5.

Experience PlanetCast at http://planetary.org Beginning at 10 a.m. on Friday, December 3, the Be Here cam will be online to give viewers the experience of being in the Jet Propulsion Lab's mission control room with live, 360 degree streaming video camera.

Your experiences of the Martian landing and the human drama surrounding it will be enabled by Intel Architecture Labs, Cisco Systems, and Akamai Technologies services, which speed up Web performance and improve reliability. Planetcast is presented by Oldsmobile.

During the three-day Planetfest conference, PlanetCast viewers will witness the touchdown of the Mars Polar Lander on the south pole of Mars, see the images and hear the sounds of Mars as they are transmitted back to Earth, and journey to other worlds -- past, present, and future -- with Planetfest co-chairs Buzz Aldrin and Bill Nye the Science Guy, and many other renowned scientists, engineers, astronauts and writers.

The touchdown of the Mars Polar Lander features the debut of the Mars Microphone, which will capture the first sounds from Mars. The Mars Microphone was developed by The Planetary Society and is the first planetary instrument of any kind to be funded entirely by a private organization. The first sounds from Mars will be broadcast during PlanetCast.

The PlanetCast schedule is:

Friday, Dec. 3
10:30am -7 pm (PST)
Be Here cam: 10am - 4pm

Saturday, Dec. 4
10am-5pm, (PST)

Sunday, Dec. 5
10am - 4pm (PST)

Monday, Dec. 6
10am-12pm
(PST, webcast only)

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