Austrian Space Forum

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Logo of the Austrian Space Forum (OeWF)

The ÖWF (Austrian Space Forum) is a network for space specialists and those interested in space. The organization has specialized in analog research over the past 10 years and is one of the world's leading organizations preparing for manned spaceflight. Research at the highest level is carried out here together with national and international research institutions, industry and companies from various sectors. The OeWF uses its excellent contacts to opinion leaders, politics and the media to promote and publicize top Austrian research and technology internationally. The Austrian Space Forum is also one of the most important educational institutions in Austria when it comes to space travel and to get young people excited about science and technology and to give them access to this industry. In addition to supervising university work, the OeWF also repeatedly offers students and schoolchildren the opportunity to expand their knowledge through internships.

The forum has a very active core of members, who often also work professionally as space specialists in close cooperation with other national and international space organizations. There are also space enthusiasts who enthusiastically get involved in the OeWF and contribute their expertise from a wide variety of disciplines.

The spectrum of activities ranges from school visits to bring the next generation closer to the subject of space, to the 80,000 visitor exhibition on space research and space travel; from expert reports for the republic, international Mars expedition simulations to the mediation of space technologies for terrestrial applications:

history

The idea of ​​founding a forum as a communication platform between space enthusiasts, experts and the next generation of space specialists arose in 1997 in Turin , when the International Astronautical Federation was holding its annual meeting there.

Motivated by the great success of the activities of the Space Generation Forum in the course of the UNISPACE III conference in Vienna in July 1999, the Austrian Space Forum was founded as an association.

The activities as an independent organization began with two lecture evenings in 1998 and 1999, in which representatives of national and international organizations took part. At the beginning of 2001, the OeWF began to expand its activities to include small projects, technical seminars and school lectures.

activities

Mission patch from AustroMars

One of the most successful events in the early days of the forum was the Science Fiction Week, which took place in Vienna's Danube Center in September 2002 and attracted more than 10,000 visitors. The range of this major event spanned from panel discussions with space experts from all over Europe and science fiction authors, through model rocket handicrafts with children, a space and science fiction exhibition to Klingon exhibition fights. Further initiatives included an Austria-wide traveling exhibition on the fascination of space under the title “New Horizons” with 15,000 visitors in 2004 and individual events such as “Descent II” on the occasion of the landing of the Cassini-Huygens probe on Saturn's moon Titan . In addition, there is intensive cooperation with schools, planetariums and amateur astronomy organizations . In 2001, "Spacecity Salzburg" with 3500 participants (in a single federal state) became Austria's largest and most successful, privately organized space youth competition.

In addition to public relations work, the forum is also increasingly involved in space activities, including a medical experiment for manned long-term space flights as part of a parabolic flight campaign of the European Space Agency , a conference on space and security policy, the successful simulation of a manned Mars landing in the Utah desert under the name "AustroMars". The project led to a great media presence of the topic “manned Mars flight” in Austria and finally to the ambitious follow-up project “PolAres”.

Since 2007, the forum has focused on analog research including the development of its own Mars spacesuit simulator Aouda and carried out 12 simulated Mars expeditions. In 2016, the ÖWF organized the 29th Planetary Congress (October 3–7, 2016) of the Association of Space Explorers in Vienna together with spaceman Franz Viehböck .

AustroMars

AustroMars was a project of the forum with the aim of carrying out a two-week mission simulation in April 2006. For the first time, the crew consisted of purely Austrian candidates who were selected through a psychological-medical selection process. Austrian experiments as well as a large part of the hardware came from Austria. The Mission Control Center was located in Salzburg in the Christian-Doppler-Gymnasium and Realgymnasium .

The four main objectives of the project were:

  1. to show the performance of Austrian space capacities,
  2. promote the analog sciences on Mars ,
  3. to give scientific impulses in related fields, and
  4. to inform and inspire the public about the mission.

PolAres

PolAres program logo

The PolAres program was the lighthouse research program of the OeWF from 2007-2017. This interdisciplinary project, with international participation, examined partial aspects of future expeditions to Mars . The goals included the development of procedures for the interaction between humans and robots / probes as well as the definition of procedures to prevent contamination of a foreign environment with terrestrial microorganisms. The project was divided into four major areas:

  • Scout : The aim was to find and classify Mars-like landscapes in Europe.
  • "Passepartout" balloon : Construction of a stratospheric balloon , which was first launched on October 4, 2007 on the occasion of 50 years of space travel and reached a height of over 28 km. More balloons will be launched until April 21, 2012, to mark the 100th anniversary of the discovery of cosmic rays.
  • Rover "Phileas" : had 80-80-80 as a mission target. Withstand temperatures as low as −80 ° C in the desert and arctic, work for 80 days and be usable beyond the 80th parallel.
  • Suit "Aouda" : Development of an analog space suit .

Rio Tinto Simulation 2011

From April 18-22, 2011, the Austrian Space Forum carried out a simulated Mars expedition in the semi-desert of Rio Tinto together with international partners (such as ESA with their rover “Eurobot”). The “Aouda” suit and the “Phileas” rover were tested, which carried out various scientific experiments, as well as their autonomy and cooperation with one another. The Mission Control Center, in which the mission was planned, coordinated and collected scientific data evaluated, was set up in Innsbruck.

Dachstein Mars Simulation 2012

From April 27 to May 1, 2012 the Austrian Space Forum once again carried out a simulated Mars expedition with international partners (such as the JPL ). The Dachstein giant ice caves served as an analogous Martian environment. For the first time a Mars simulation was carried out in a cave system. Cave systems have been known on Mars for several years and are particularly interesting from an astrobiological perspective, as caves shield off cosmic rays. In the course of the Dachstein Mars simulation, a space tweetup was carried out in Austria for the first time . 18 users of the microblogging platform Twitter came to MarsTweetup and were able to take an exclusive look behind the scenes of a Mars Analog mission.

Mars2013 - Morocco Mars Analog Field Simulation 2013

From February 1 to 28, 2013, the OeWF - in cooperation with the Ibn Battuta Center in Marrakesh - carried out a four-week Mars field simulation as part of the PolAres science program in the northern Sahara near Erfoud, Morocco. The field crew in Morocco was instructed and monitored by Mission Control, the Mission Support Center in Innsbruck. The planned experiments serve the basic research for future manned Mars missions. They come from a. from the fields of engineering, work on planetary surfaces, astrobiology, geophysics / geology and life sciences. The scientific results of this mission were published in a special edition of the renowned astrobiology magazine.

AMADEE-15 - Kaunertal Glacier Mission

From 3rd to 15th August 2015, a two-week Mars simulation called "AMADEE-15" took place together with international partners on an ice and rock glacier in Kaunertal , Austria. The field crew was also supported on this mission by a Mission Support Center in Innsbruck , Austria. The experiments carried out covered different disciplines and ranged from geological and astrobiological experiments to robotic and technical experiments. For the first time, virtual research was also carried out on this mission. The analog astronaut moved with video glasses on a simulation platform and, like the other test astronauts, was in communication with the mission control via radio. The method (V-ERAS) was developed by the Italian Mars Society.

Scientific publications on this Mars simulation:

AMADEE Program

The AMADEE is the new lighthouse program of the ÖWF and builds on the PolAres Mars research program. As a framework concept, it is responsible for the development of hardware, workflows and science for future planetary surface missions by humans and robots. A major focus of the program is to develop strategies for the detection of traces of life. In contrast to PolAres, the simulated planetary surfaces of the AMADEE program are not limited to Mars, but the possibility of investigating surface operations on other planets (e.g. the moon) is introduced.

AMADEE-18 Mars Simulation Oman

The AMADEE-18 Mars simulation took place in February 2018 in the Dhofar Desert in the south of the Sultanate of Oman . This simulated Mars expedition was first carried out as part of the AMADEE Program, together with the Oman National Steering Committee for AMADEE-18. A special issue of the scientific publications in the Astrobiology Magazine is expected in mid-June 2019.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Analog research as a scientific discipline , accessed on March 26, 2019
  2. ↑ ÖWF interns report on their internship , accessed on March 26, 2019
  3. ^ OeWF club history , accessed on March 26, 2019
  4. ↑ Brief description of the Aouda spacesuit simulator , accessed on March 26, 2019
  5. ↑ GE Groemer, S. Hauth, U. Luger, K. Bickert, B. Sattler, E. Hauth, D. Föger, D. Schildhammer, C. Agerer, C. Ragonig, S. Sams, F. Kaineder, M. Knoflach: The Aouda.X space suit simulator and its applications to astrobiology. In: Astrobiology. Volume 12, number 2, February 2012, pp. 125-134, doi : 10.1089 / ast.2011.0673 , PMID 22300413 .
  6. ↑ Brief description & final report of the ASE Congress 2016 , accessed on March 26, 2019.
  7. ^ Exploring Mars in the Austrian Alps. In: www.astrobio.net. Retrieved June 3, 2012 .
  8. ↑ First Austrian SpaceTweetup hero during Dachstein Mars Simulation , accessed on 26 March 2019
  9. ↑ O. Haider, G. Groemer: Space Tweetup - from a participant to a Mars Tweetup organizer and a new format of space communication. In: Acta Astronautica . Volume 94, number 1, 2014, pp. 215-221, doi : 10.1016 / j.actaastro.2013.08.005 . (Review)
  10. ^ Testing Mars Mission in Morocco. In: www.astrobio.net. Retrieved June 3, 2012 .
  11. ↑ Astrobiology Special Collection: MARS2013 FIELD CAMPAIGN , Simulating Mars on Earth, Astrobiology Volume 14, Issue 5 / May 2014
  12. ↑ Brief description of the AMADEE-15 mission and final report , accessed on March 26, 2019
  13. ↑ Brief description of the AMADEE Program , accessed on March 26, 2019
  14. ↑ Brief description AMADEE-18 & final report , accessed on March 26, 2019