1st EVA-Suit workshop

First, a short overview of the current status of all the PolAres teams was given as well as the EVA-Suit initial conditions and requirements set forth by the PolAres management.

The EVA-Suit team within the PolAres project is responsible for the development of a Mars analogue suit, considering also planetary protection aspects and human-robotic interaction. This includes not only the suit itself, but also peripheral equipment such as service and maintenance, crew selection & training issues as well as the provision of a drilling infrastructure for a >10m subsurface sampling capacity. The latter activity is led by Melanie Treffer who is currently pursuing a PhD on planetary cryo-volcanism.

The main focus of this workshop was the definition of the system requirements for all these tasks and structuring the first steps. After extensive brainstorming and a systematic introduction into system engineering aspects in general, given by Ernst Stelzmann from the Technical University of Graz, a system requirements document (SRD) was drafted. In addition to the suit itself also the interaction with the “Phileas” Rover. “The workshop was extremely productive and highly focussed”, PolAres PEO Gernot Groemer summarized the output of the workshop, “it is wonderful thing to see such a complex project emerging from a group of dedicated people.” As a follow-up, a first suit structural meeting was held three days afterwards with the first sketches of joint mechanisms for the EVA-gloves defined by Florian Kolb and Manuel Jelinek.

Using this as starting point, the team is now working on the details and the last input needed to fulfill the requirements. Additionally, negotiations with the Dräger-group, specialized on medical and safty technologies are planned. The new results will be presented and discussed on the next workshop, which is scheduled for the 1st and 2nd of December.