Aouda-Spacesuit

Within the mars analogue research programme “PolAres”, the Austrian Space Forum has developed the spacesuit simulator “Aouda” which is able to mimic border conditions a real Mars spacesuit would provide during a surface EVA, like weight, pressure, limited sensory input etc… Other components of PolAres include a set of geophysical instruments (e.g. GPR), a rover and a drilling infrastructure (under development) as well as a sensitive tracking technique to study contamination vectors.

Purpose

The suit is designed to study contamination vectors in planetary exploration analogue environments and create limitations depending on the pressure regime chosen for a simulation. An advanced human-machine interface, a set of sensors and a purpose designed software act as a local virtual assistant to the crewman. It is designed to interact with other field components like the rover and instruments.


 

System Overview:

• < 45 kg, Hard-Upper-Torso suit, ambient air ventilation
• Outer hull: Panox/Kevlar tissue with aluminium coating
• Modifiable exoskeleton able to simulate various pressure regimes for all major human joints including fingers
• Biomedical and engineering telemetry with W-Lan (including continuous video & audio, various temperatures, CO2, GPS, air pressure, humidity, acceleration,...), human waste mgmt.
• Advanced human-machine interface from early 2010 onwards including speech recognition and accelerometer input devices in the gloves;
• Voltage: various buses, main bus: 12 V; W-Lan band: 5 GHz, Back-up analogue Radio for contingency situations

• 4-6 hours (incl. donning/doffing) field operations
• Temperature limits: -80°C and +35°C (to be confirmed)
• >1 km W-Lan range (can be extended with directional W-Lan)
• Operational requirements:
• power supply on-site for telemetry laptops & displays
• Donning/doffing time: approx. 30 min.
• System weight incl. support infrastructure: approx. 100 kg (tbd)