Mission Support serves the function of what has historically been called Mission Control for previous human space exploration endeavors. Mission Support's role is to be the "Earth-bound" group of experts that supports the work of the MDRS crew. "Support" is a better word than "Control" in the case of a mission to Mars, in which the large physical distance necessitates a great deal of independent operation on the part of a Martian crew.

John W. Barainca	Certified Flight Instructor - John has taught biology, physics, astronomy, aeronautics and astronautics at the high school level. He created a space flight simulation as part of his science classes and has been "flying" students for the past 29 years. He currently operates a mobile unit in which students fly to Mars each day. He also teaches astronomy at the Salt Lake Community College. In addition to space flight simulations, John has worked with students to fly an experiment in a GAS canister in the payload bay of the Space Shuttle, designed and flown an experiment on a satellite (WEBERSAT), and has flown experiments on Air Force high altitude balloons. He is extremely interested in exobiology and will be focusing on activites related to the methodology of collecting and classifying extremophiles in addition to other operational aspects of the MDRS simulation. He plans to share his experiences and the MDRS project with the educational community. John's hobbies include skiing, mountaineering and horseback riding.
Dr. William Clancey	Chief Scientist, Human Centered Computing - NASA/Ames. His contribution for MDRS: Helping conceptualize and formalize analog investigations; methods include participant observation and simulating hab activities ("a day in the life"); special interests: How life support systems maintenance constrains science activities; role of mission support in bridging communication with systems & science specialists on Earth.
Julie Edwards	Mission Support Director. Julie was our CapCom Coordinator for many years and probably knows more about supporting MDRS Operations then a lot of folks. This made her the logical choice in the fall of 2007 for promotion to this extremely important role when Dr. Tony Muscatello accepted the ultimate promotion, an invitation to go to work at NASA. (All CapCom Bios)
Gary Fisher	GreenHab group Manager - I try to coordinate the group activities with the overall MDRS effort. My own particular task has been building the greenhouse.
Alex Kirk	MDRS and FMARS Webmaster. Alex joined Mission Support in the spring of 2007 and immediately undertook the daunting task of getting the FMARS web site ready for reports and data from the FXI Long Duration Mission Crew. Over the summer of 2007 he worked on updating the MDRS website's code and was instrumental in getting the MDRS site prepared for the 2007-2008 field season. By day Alex is a professional computer analyst and programmer, who lives in the Washington, DC metropolitan area with his wife and three cats.
Jean Lagarde	Information Management Coordinator. Jean is a key player on The Mars Society web team. coordinating the efforts of the various web team members, to ensure that our web sites are up todate and easy for our members and the general public to use.
Heather Rose	MDRS Mission Support Operations. Heather Rose works at Pioneer Astronautics. She assists Dr Zubrin with crew selection process and sees to it that the crews are briefed for their MDRS rotation in a timely manner. Heather is also the contact person to who crews must make their "in transit" reports to as they transfer from their arrival airport to Hanksville and back at the start and end of their analogue research mission. This is a safety requirement, so Mission Support we can track the crews as they travel to and from MDRS, to ensure their safe arrival at each end.