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.
NASA’s First Landing Site/Exploration Zone Workshop for Human Missions to the Surface of Mars is already influencing the agency’s evolving efforts to reach the Red Planet with astronauts in two decades.
NASA abruptly halted a planned 6 1/2-hr. spacewalk outside the International Space Station by U.S. and U.K. astronauts Tim Kopra and Tim Peake on Jan. 15 when water appeared in the helmet of Kopra’s NASA spacesuit.
NASA’s new Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) places a fresh, top-level agency focus on the detection and tracking of asteroids and comets that could threaten Earth, as well as the coordination of interagency and intergovernmental response efforts.
