A 19-people team members operating a spacesuit simulator? Yes, and each of them is necessary at an exceptional location for a Mars-analogue right in the heart of Europe – the Kaunertal glacier. Bright sunshine and high summer “Mars” temperature (ca. 8°C) at 2.750 sea level are the conditions for the PolAres team. Not only scientific equipment and experiments are present also Operations (“OPS”, a kind of a mobile control centre), but also photographers and several press teams, making Ulrich Luger, one of the spacesuit testers feel like a top model. Meanwhile the experienced suit technician team helps the suit tester in the 45 kg suit – the donning activities last at least one hour.
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According to the flight plan the first task for the suit tester is walking to the glacier crevasse to talk ice samples for the contamination vector experiment. On Mars, it is extremely important to be able to handle the pristine samples as clean as possible to avoid any insertion of “terrestrial black passangers” in the form of hitchhiking bacteria in the very sample. Using a Ground Penetrating Radar, caves in the glacier are measured and then entered during this unusual exoeriment, followed by a sequence of sample collections in the old ice.

On the second day the location is not directly at the glacier, but in exceptionally steep terrain – one of the operational qeustions include simple problems, like to what extent can a suit tester be used in rough terrain. In a steep gorge there was another deployment of the GPR, where a 100 m wide strip will be measured. The collected data will be later analyzed by geophysics specialists at the Technical University of Vienna. This is the first time for Daniel Föger as suit tester and he starts with the challenge to find the GPR testing place with the 45 kg suit through difficult and steep area.

“Never before we brought the suit and the tester to suchlike limits”, says Sebastian Sams, Operations lead for the second test day of the Austrian Space Forum “now we know how far we can go with the suit in context of surefootedness and challenging ground.” The team of the Austrian Space Forum returned a plethora of data fom this shortm but exhausting field tests, plus a set of samples from exotic places like old ice and steep mountain rock glaciers. It may take a few more weeks to analyse the data, but it will certainly will be one step closer to Mars.

Field test weekend video

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