On the morning of Friday the 8th of Februari, near the end of the preparation and media week for the Mars 2013 analog field simulation expedition, something extraordinary happened: Morocco, Austria and Finland were connected to each other using a shared video chat through Google Plus Hangout.

In this way, Olivia Haider could tell something about the Mars 2013 field team base camp in Morroco, Jarno Peschier could give a quick tour of the Mission Support Center for Mars 2013 in Innsbruck, while Remco Timmermans – organiser of the AuroraTweetup – could tell something about the Northern Lights his group has already seen.

Tweeps in Finland watching the Hangout. (c) AuroraTweetup (Remco Timmermans)

Even though there were some technical problems along the way, which means that the middle part of the nearly one hour long Hangout was unfortunately not saved, and the beginning and ending of it are now stored in different YouTube videos, this does not mean this online meeting wasn’t a great succes.

Please have a look at the two videos below and let us know what you think; should the OeWF try to do this more often in the future?