International Crew of Six Analog Astronauts will emulate the Exploration of the Red Planet

Following intensive preparations, the 14th Mars Analog Mission of the Austrian Space Forum (OeWF) starts today. AMADEE-24 is carried out in cooperation with the Armenian Space Agency. This expedition is the authentic test run for the astronautical exploration of the Red Planet and is led by a dedicated Mission Support Center in Austria. At the test site in Armenia, a crew of six highly trained analog astronauts will conduct experiments in the fields of human factors, geology and robotics to prepare for future human and robotic Mars exploration missions. During the Mars Analog Mission, the six analog astronauts will live and work in a specially developed habitat and will only leave it wearing the OeWF spacesuit prototype. More than 200 researchers from 25 countries are involved in this international mission under Austrian leadership..

Photos and videos of the Mission:
https://mediafiles.oewf.org/s/jkXd39LX6TWoeq7

International team of experts emulates Mars mission

Dr. Gernot Grömer, Director of the Austrian Space Forum: “The OeWF is at the forefront when it comes to analogue research. Our missions emulate the astronautical exploration of the Red Planet with great authenticity in order to find problems and errors already here on Earth. We use the spacesuit prototypes we developed, operate a mission support center, and work with a 10-minute communication delay to the test site. Many international science teams are happy to take advantage of this extraordinary opportunity to subject their developments to a test that is as realistic as possible. When we will send people to Mars in probably 30 years, everything will have to be flawless, because the next workshop and the next hospital are 6 months away.”.“

Six Analog Astronauts in Armenia

The analog astronauts were selected through a comprehensive selection process and trained specifically for the mission. The six-person analog astronaut team is led by the German public health expert Dr. Anika Mehlis, her deputy is the Austrian physicist Dr. Robert Wild. The team is completed by Dr. Carmen Köhler, expert for artificial intelligence in the field of environment and sustainability from Germany, the astrophysicist Inigo Munoz Elorza, MSc, from Spain, the Italian aerospace engineer Dr. Simone Paternostro, and the astrophysicist Dr. Thomas Wijnen from the Netherlands.

Mission Support Center in Vienna, Austria

The crew in Armenia is supported by the Mission Support Center in Vienna, where everything comes together. Here, the vital signs of the analog astronauts are monitored during missions in the spacesuit prototypes, the implementation of the experiments is planned and supported, and the data collected at the test site is secured and forwarded to the internationally involved scientists. The crew in Armenia must be able to solve their tasks and problems independently, because communication between analog astronauts and the Mission Support Center is delayed by 10 minutes. This simulates the average signal transit time between Mars and Earth.

What is Analog Research?

Gernot Grömer again: “We emulate the work of astronauts in combination with the use of robots in Mars-like environments on Earth. For this purpose, we are one of five organizations worldwide to have developed and built a spacesuit prototype that the analog astronauts will wear during their ‘spacewalks’. Our prototype simulates a spacesuit and its movement restrictions, weighs 50 kg and is equipped with medical telemetry so our analog astronauts experience their ‘spacewalks’ as Mars-like as possible. With our analog research, we test and look for weak points so that everything can go smoothly in actual use. This method makes it easier to understand the advantages, but also the limitations, of future astronautical missions on alien planets. It also helps in the development of so-called “remote science operations”, which are scientific processes that do not take place at the test site. In this way, the analog astronauts are supported as efficiently as possible in exploring the terrestrial Mars analog environment using technology and workflows.”

ABOUT THE AUSTRIAN SPACE FORUM
The Austrian Space Forum (OeWF) is a private space research institution, as ESA’s first Ground Based Facility in Austria we operate a vertical treadmill to simulate different gravity-levels, and a network for spaceflight specialists, business/industry and people interested in space. We conduct Mars Analog Missions on a regular bases, involving scientists and institutions from all over the world. The OeWF is playing a leading role in two international Cube-Sat missions that detected space debris in Near Earth Orbit from 2022 to 2024. We cooperate with international research institutions and companies and are in constant dialog with the media and decision makers. With 250 members from 20+ nations, the Austrian Space Forum focuses on scientific excellence, starts, shapes and networks careers and has been inspiring people all over the world since 1998. https://oewf.org

MEDIA CONTACT
Mag. Monika Fischer
Media Officer
Austrian Space Forum
Tel: +43 699 1213 4610

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