29. August 2009

Update on an upgrade: Aouda.X is currently being prepared for the upcoming glacier tests at the Pasterze region in Austria. A team of engineers of the Austrian Space Forum and students from the Technical School Fulpmes are focussing on getting Aouda.X ready for her first tests in a remote location.

So what's new in comparison with the comissioning tests in Kramsach in early July 2009? - Well, first there is a new team member, at least a virtual one: MARVIN stands for "Mars Analogue Research Versatile Information Network" and is the software agent behind the data analysis. "At this moment, it is only able to interpret a few basic measurement data and have it transferred from the sensors to the central processing unit and -via 5 GHz wireless LAN - to the operations console, OPS for short", explains Stefan Hauth. "However, the intriguing thing is, that MARVIN will be expanded into a much more powerful and versatile field assistent which shall help the astronaut to accomplish great field science under very safe conditions."

"Building a spacesuit simulator is a very demanding and highly interdisciplinary task", project manager Gernot Groemer adds, "we have a bunch of very talented young people and experienced staff members here at the Technical School and we're all learning here a lot while we proceed with the upgrade programme."

Aouda.X  -named after the indian princess from Jules Vernes' novel "Around the world in 80 days"- will be outfitted with new mechanical boot and glove interfaces, including a boot heater system. Why that? "Well, there's a really COOL test we're going to run in a few weeks from now", Stefan Hauth, "although we cannot reveal to many details yet, it seems we've found a very unusual partner to do perform an deep temperature operational test with Aouda.X."  - So stay tuned!