28July – 1 Aug 2014

This week, the Spacesuit Laboratory in Innsbruck took further steps towards upgrading the Aouda.X suit in advance of next year’s missions. All the team members clarified details of the overall design with others across Austria, and with this consensus we can now move forward with our exciting new plans for the hardware. Veronika has been continuing her work devising the requirements for the mapping system, and I have just been tasked with redesigning the heads up display inside the helmet, which will inevitably involve a great deal of additional coordination with members across the organisation. Michael and I have been spending the majority of the week preparing the PLSS hardware for assembly, and Sebastian has been continuing to perfect our mission support-suit connectivity.

We also said goodbye to Taylor this week after several weeks working on her masters thesis. We wish her the best of luck with the remainder of her studies and her new life in Germany! But the following week we are welcoming Lukas to our team. He will be assisting us with our projects for the next 4 weeks.

14 – 18 Jul 2014

This week, we welcomed Michael to our team. He will be helping us out with our projects and be another brain for us to bounce ideas off of. He will be joining myself on the Aouda.X spacesuit introductory course on Monday and Tuesday, which hopefully will give us more insight into the deeper workings of the suit’s systems.

The cardboard modelling of the PLSS has been finished, so far as our knowledge of the new components can take us. Additionally, all the components for the PLSS have been 3D modelled in AutoCAD. Julia has been working on modelling the more formidable components, while Michael and I have been modelling the smaller components. I have been designing and modelling a casing for a computer chip, which really stretched my AutoCAD ablilty.

Vicky and Taylor have been continuing their work on their theses. All of the bureaucratic hurdles involved in their research activities have now been overcome, so they are now on the home straight! Vicky is creating a model of the temperature in a spacesuit, while Taylor is investigating the relationship (should one exist) between carbon dioxide production and heart rate while the astronaut is in the suit.

– Andrew Lamb