Österreichisches Weltraum Forum Austrian Space Forum
On the last day of the year, we love to look back and review the year 2018 with our best pictures. 2018 was definitely dominated by our AMADEE-18 Mars Simulation in Oman. But we also did a lot of school activities and started to develop a new generation of spacesuit simulators.
To celebrate the 20tiest anniversary of the Austrian Space Forum we organized the first “Österreichische Weltraumball” in January at the Palais Niederösterreich. Besides classical ballroom dance music the ball also glittered and sparkled with space references. The evening was a great success and therefore the second edition will take place on 16. February 2019.
During the AMADEE-18 bridgehead phase, visitors were allowed at the AMADEE-18 Kepler Station and got first-hand insights from our field crew. Our analog astronaut Carmen Koehler served as a special role model for the young, female next-gen researchers from Oman. (c) OeWF (Florian Voggeneder)
Over 200 people from 25 nations were involved in the AMADEE-18 Mars Simulation which took place in the Dofhar desert in Southern Oman. This iconic photo from “The Kepler Station” series of our mission photographer Florian Voggeneder, was featured in major magazines like Wired and therefore was seen by a global audience. (c) OeWF (Florian Voggeneder)
During the Researchers Night in 2018 visitors got the possibility to get very close to space research like with our children spacesuits at the Audioversum Science Center in Innsbruck. (c) Audioversum
After the AMADEE-18 Mars simulation the decision was taken to build a 2nd generation of spacesuit simulators – to reduced donning times as well as the weight of the spacesuit. In this first workshops the requirements of such a spacesuit simulator were defined.
The scientific work of the Austrian Space Forum is top-notch: In this year’s influential „Human to Mars Report“ from Explore Mars, the AMADEE-18 Simulation was featured as impressive and well-funded non-government Mars project. Moreover, during the AMADEE-18 Science Workshop in Graz, first promising results of the Mars simulation were discussed. These results will be published in 2019 in a special edition of the Astrobiology magazine. (Photo from left: Thomas Vögele (DFKI), Gerhard Paar (Joaneum Research), Gernot Grömer (OeWF), Andreas Geisler (FFG))
This year saw the 5th edition of the 2-day introductory course into spacesuit system in Innsbruck. Besides typical lectures, the participants enjoyed many hands-on activities as well as an up-close meeting with the Aouda spacesuit simulator.
That’d be an easy guess in this group of children from the primary school in Asten, Upper Austria. One of our primary goals is to explain and excited people for space from young children up to adults.
In collaboration with Empa – Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, a series of measurements with the Aouda and the next generation spacesuit simulator were done. During this test campaign, the pressure and load distribution while standing & walking were measured to get crucial inputs for the further improvement the load carriage system (and the comfort for the analog astronaut).
Building water rockets is our long-standing STEM-workhorse for classroom activities. With simple material like paper, pens and scissors as well as a half-filled water bottle primary school child learn how a rocket works. This might inspire them also to later pursue a career in STEM subjects (c) OeWF (Gerhard Grömer)
In autumn we presented the next generation of Mars spacesuit simulators. This series is called „Serenity“ and stands for calm, easygoing. Serenity will see its first deployment during a Mars simulation in 2020. The biggest innovation is the rear-entry, which makes this spacesuit simulator more realistic to future human spacesuits. (c) OeWF (Bernhard Kaliauer)
The OeWF was part of this year’s IAC2018 in Bremen. Besides OeWF presentations and networking activities, an OeWF delegation visited also the laboratory of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI).
The last two months of 2018 were strongly focused to find candidates for our new class of analog astronauts. Over 100 highly qualified applicants from all over Europe applied for our new call. 30 of them were invited for the B-selection, 15 for the C-selection in Innsbruck. During these 2 selections rounds several hundred parameters were recorded. Who will be trained for the class of 2019 stays a secret – to be revealed in 2019.
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