Mark is based in Houston, where he has written on aerospace for more than 25 years. While at the Houston Chronicle, he was recognized by the Rotary National Award for Space Achievement Foundation in 2006 for his professional contributions to the public understanding of America's space program through news reporting. He has written on U. S. space policy as well as NASA's human and space science initiatives.
Mark was recognized by the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors and Headliners Foundation as well as the Chronicle in 2004 for news coverage of the shuttle Columbia tragedy and its aftermath.
He is a graduate of the University of Kansas and holds a Master's degree in Journalism and Mass Communications from Kansas State University.
One U.S. astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts departed the International Space Station for a safe descent to Earth in remote Kazakhstan late Oct. 21, leaving the orbiting science lab staffed by three crew for at least three weeks as NASA and its Commercial Crew Program partners continue efforts to kickoff regularly scheduled crew launches.
Flying autonomously more than 208 million mi. from Earth, NASA’s Osiris-Rex spacecraft made brief successful contact with the boulder-strewn surface of the asteroid Bennu, according to data from the probe received by the mission operations and science teams on Oct. 20.
The modest sample of pebbles and soil that NASA’s Osiris-Rex sample return mission will attempt to gather from the asteroid Bennu may hold important clues to how life arose on Earth and perhaps other planetary bodies.
