Discovering research - creating fascination. The OEWF is a national network for space professionals and space interested people. We develop space projects and convey enthusiasm.

Friday 30th July 07:00 p.m. The team for the field test weekend has arrived in the Aouda spacesuit lab for the pre-briefing. A lot of boxes and equipment must be stored and the flight plan for the weekend is explained. New team members are introduced and final questions are answered because at the same evening the whole team transfers to the village "Feichten" which is the last village before the Kaunertal glacier.

We can smell sweat and hot metal when we enter the workshop. The sound strengthens the impression we get from the smell: Obviously, somebody works pretty hard in here!

Day 1: Preparations for experiments with sand and ice

The sun is sneaking through some clouds, workshop team members are eating their breakfast while project leader Gernot Groemer is opening the morning briefing. All activities for the day are discussed and the team members are starting with their assigned tasks.

From the 21st to the 24th of May the next field test for the spacesuit simulator Aouda.X will take place. This time a piece of Phileas Rover hardware will most likely be a part of the test, for the first time! "The goal is the full integration of the electronic-hardware with the option, to test the air-condition and thermal element directly from the mission control centre." explains Dipl. Phys. Klaus Bickert from the team. "Our preparations will also enable the usage of the consisting power distribution, which means that even with bigger problems on this side, everything can be operated mechanically."

2009, being the eleventh year since the foundation of the Austrian Space Forum, primarily saw great advances in the PolAres programme amongst many other projects and incentives. Lectures in schools, at exhibitions or educational programmes for children have reached an unrivalled high. Aside from these successful public events and the research and development of the ASF, a subtle change in the internal structures of the forum was undertaken, with the goal to make the ASF a more effective organization. This change was the consolidation of the service-units like the newsgroup in order to facilitate publications and the day-to-day business involving the creation of the ever growing newsletter. This also involved the effective incorporation of social media tools for the first time.

After the HTL Salzburg has developed the energysystems of the Phileas PolAres rover, Florian Ehrenreich, Kevin Gassner and Markus Herz – all three are students of the speciality machinery/automatisation - start their diploma work.

Some of the first documents of human history are paintings found in caves, like in the Spanish Altamira cave. Those paintings date back to 30 000 years! So what does this fact have to do with OEWF space suit simulator Aouda.X? Easy: quite possibly, the first humans on Mars will not live on the surface, but start by building an infrastructure below the surface. This has been shown by recent study done by participants of the International Space University at the NASA Ames Research Center, where Forum member Olivia Haider was involved (ACCESS-Report 2009).

During the UN World Space Week the Austrian Space Forum was charged with the the organisation of a "Space Adventure" in the Planetarium of Vienna by the Office for Space Affairs of the United nations. About 300 visitors experienced on the 4th of October space travel in a wide mix of talks, hands on experiences and a real Astronaut.

The prototype for a Mars Spacesuit Aouda.X was tested at -110°C on the 21st of September in a cryo-therapy chamber in Seefeld (Tyrol).

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