Österreichisches Weltraum Forum Austrian Space Forum
The well known science journal Astrobiology has published a special edition covering the MARS2013 expedition of the Austrian Space Forum. In seven distinct scientific publications, which all went through strikt international peer review, several of the conducted experiments are presented. Not all of the performed experiments are included in this edition, over the next few months those will be featured in other editions of ASTROBIOLOGY as well as other science journals.
“The Austrian Space Forum and its partners have shown again in this special collection of ASTROBIOLOGY that Mars-analogue research has left the stage of being a new, pre-science and is entering the ranks of established sciences.” says ASTROBIOLOGY guest editor and president of the Austrian Space Forum Gernot Grömer. “It also shows that the Forum and its partners, like the Ibn-Battuta-Center for Exploration in Morocco, participate in internationally recognised work”
A year has passed since the expedition, yet the publication only appears now. This is mostly due to the fact that large sets of data had to be analysed and discussed first. In the framework of a conference at the TU Vienna (supported by the Austrian Science Ministry) the first results were discussed. This led to first, internal drafts for the publications. After this step, several drafts were proposed for the “MARS2013 Special Collection”, which was met with enthusiasm by Dr. Sheryl Cady, Editor-in-Chief.
Thanks to the multi-mission data archive of the Forum, those data will be available for the science community. Over the next weeks, several projects and academic theses will use them, for example for a comparison between real data from the space suit simulators and virtual simulators.
More than 100 people, mainly volunteers, from 23 nations have taken part in this expeditionally Mars-Simulation, the mission support center was located Innsbruck, with teams for flight planning, scientific support, Media, Ground Support and Mission controll, as well as 17 research teams from all over the globe (New Zealand as well as the US).
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