Project Dawnstar was the codename given to the "Flights to Mars for $99" April Fool's Day prank launched on both Expedia.com and Expedia.co.uk on April 1, 2009. The effort was coordinated by Expedia, working alongside three social media agencies to generate exposure on the internet.
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At 23:59 GMT on 31 March 2009, Expedia.com and Expedia.co.uk simultaneously released their Flights to Mars microsites. The pages included details on various hotels on Mars, activities on Mars as well as a booking wizard which allowed you to select your leaving point and Spacecraft for the journey, which would eventually take you through after a search to an "all flights are booked" result but provided the user with a voucher for their trouble.
The page also featured a fake TV advert for flights to Mars [1] which were hosted on YouTube. Each of these videos were produced by Expedia for the launch of the campaign.
The flights to Mars hoax garnered a large coverage on social networking sites Twitter [2] and Reddit [3] but as of 2pm April 1, 2009 had not reached 'Popular' status on Digg.com [4]