Which is more viral, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos getting buzzed by a robotic dragonfly, or Bezos buzzing in Lift Aircraft’s Hexa passenger drone?
Those are just a couple of today’s highlights from Amazon’s annual invitation-only festival in Palm Springs, Calif., celebrating Machine learning, Automation, Robotics and Space. As usual, we’re on the outside looking in, based on tweets with the #MARS2019 hashtag and reports from those on the scene at The Parker Resort.
Lindy Elkins-Tanton, a planetary scientist at Arizona State University, has emerged as the most reliable tweeter about the MARS goings-on. She’s the one who tweeted out a video clip of Bezos keeping watch amid a crowd of attendees as a robo-dragonfly flitted around the conference grounds. She also shared imagery showing Bezos in the driver’s seat of Lift’s ultralight aircraft at the Palm Springs Air Museum.
The moments echoed Bezos’ viral photo op with Boston Dynamics’ SpotMini robo-dog at last year’s MARS meeting, and his grand entrance in a giant robot to kick off 2017’s event.
https://twitter.com/ltelkins/status/1107818486443606016
https://twitter.com/ltelkins/status/1107742067633983488
So far, flying contraptions have been dominating the MARS goings-on. But there’s lots more to keep watch for, including the occasion celebrity sighting.
We know that “Star Wars” star Mark Hamill is there because he shows up in the background of a selfie from gravitational-wave researcher Chiara Mingarelli:
https://twitter.com/Dr_CMingarelli/status/1107499627731800064
We know that retired NASA astronaut Story Musgrave, one of the spacewalking saviors of the Hubble Space Telescope, is also in attendance — thanks to a couple of tweets from Wobbly Labs game developer Robin Baumgarten:
https://twitter.com/Robin_B/status/1107463520474550272
Another former NASA astronaut, Mike Massimino, tweeted a selfie in a flight simulator for NASA’s Orion deep-space capsule. (He and others no doubt took advantage of MARS’ policy of not charging admission for astronauts.)
https://twitter.com/Astro_Mike/status/1107758533125107712
Attendees are getting in on a wide assortment of demos and tech talks, with plenty of time for geeking out and partying down. As you can expect, there’s an emphasis on what Amazon is doing on the tech frontier, and what Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture is doing on the final frontier.
“Our goals are simple and remain unchanged from the first event,” Bezos wrote in his welcome to this year’s fourth annual MARS conference. “We’ll consider this gathering a big success if you find something inspiring, make a new friend or two, and — most important — have some fun!”
After three years of MARS, Bezos and his Amazon teammates are planning an open-to-the-public version of the conference, called re:MARS, from June 4 to 7 in Las Vegas. But the fact that this week’s event is hush-hush and invitation-only adds a sense of mystery that re:MARS may find hard to match.
Check out the tweets below to get a taste of the MARS magic.
https://twitter.com/ltelkins/status/1107668127255392256
https://twitter.com/ltelkins/status/1107677606755762176
https://twitter.com/ltelkins/status/1107694699333058561
https://twitter.com/ltelkins/status/1107697398380298240
https://twitter.com/dorskuler/status/1107795673288769536
https://twitter.com/ltelkins/status/1107698592804818944
https://twitter.com/ltelkins/status/1107698791472197632
https://twitter.com/flir/status/1107725920650043393
https://twitter.com/ltelkins/status/1107702056997937152
https://twitter.com/amorawski/status/1107737734880198656
https://twitter.com/ltelkins/status/1107741762158682112
https://twitter.com/natalya926/status/1107775610032578560
https://twitter.com/ltelkins/status/1107742344047022080
https://twitter.com/pabbeel/status/1107809637473017856
https://twitter.com/siddhss5/status/1107828920307482624
https://twitter.com/DavaExplorer/status/1107856653787906049
https://twitter.com/ltelkins/status/1107862553474928640
https://twitter.com/ltelkins/status/1107862747247591424
https://twitter.com/natalya926/status/1107863348740120581
This is an updated version of a report first published at 9:20 p.m. PT March 17. I’ve corrected a version that listed Elkins-Tanton as a planetary scientist at “Amazon State University.” The Seattle-based retailer is known for moving aggressively into new markets, but not quite that aggressively. Thanks to Rami Grunbaum for pointing out the error.