Proceedings of the 2004 NASA/JPL Workshop on Physics for Planetary Exploration

The conference was held April 20-22, 2004, the NASA/JPL Workshop on Physics for Planetary Exploration focused on NASA's new concentration on sending crewed missions to the Moon by 2020 and then to Mars and beyond. However, our ground-based physics experiments are continuing to be funded, and it will be possible to compete for $80-90 million in new money from the NASA exploration programs. Papers presented at the workshop related how physics research can help NASA to prepare for and accomplish this grand scheme of exploration. From sensors for water on the Moon and Mars, to fundamental research on those bodies, and to aids for navigating precisely to landing sites on distant planets, diverse topics were addressed by the Workshop speakers.