The members of the AAS team support our analog astronauts in many areas such as: training, equipment, preparations, interview and media requests, event requests, schedule coordination and logistical tasks.

What does your team do?

Claudia: Our Analog Astronaut Support Team supports the analog astronauts in all areas, ranging from the first basic training over refresher trainings to mission specific training, the regular “Glove Exercise” (training with the gloves of the space suit simulator), appointment coordination, contact point for interview-, media-, film-, event requests, logistic tasks like e.g. equipment procurement, data collection, address management, business cards, etc., contact person for other teams to coordinate between analog astronauts and them (e.g. availabilities for trainings, feedback for experiments, space suit development).

How do you support analog astronauts in the field?

Claudia: In the field itself, we can only provide very limited support as an Analog Astronaut Support team during the mission and the isolation phase of a mission. Firstly because of the 10 minute time delay in communication between the analog astronauts on simulated Mars in Israel and our team in Austria (one way) and secondly because of the spatial distance. The main tasks are in the mission preparation and post-processing, this must be done at most precision, but requests that are forwarded from the Mission Support Center to the AAS team during a mission are of course processed. Some team members of the AAS team are in a “double role” during our Mars simulation AMADEE-20 and also act as members of On-Site Support (OSS) and can thus support the analog astronauts during the mission in Israel.

What are your tasks before and after a mission?

Claudia: Before a mission, the training of the analog astronauts is more mission-specific, the coordination with other teams is more intensive and the requests become correspondingly more detailed, the interview requests pile up and the schedule coordination becomes tighter. After a mission is also before a mission, so tasks change only slightly. Requests and coordination are more specific to the mission itself and its experiments just before and after a mission, but training for the next mission and preparations continue all the time.

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