Swarovsky Award for Aouda-Suit

14. Feb. 2008

For the "Development of a most-likely Mars spacesuit model" in the context of the PolAres programme, the Austrian Space Forum was awarded a small research grant sponsored by the "brilliant company" Swarovsky.

Oliver Hauser (ÖWF Innsbruck) received the award on behalf of the team in a price giving ceremony at the University of Innsbruck on February, 14th.

"This project will create a reference scenario for PolAres to be used for the technical design of the simulated Aouda spacesuit", explains Gernot Groemer (ÖWF Innbruck). Similar to AustroMars, this design exercise supplements the implementation of realistic scenarios for the technologies used and activities planned for Mars exploration. This also includes the assessement of relevant environmental parameters and border conditions as well as the extrapolation of current technologies which might be expected to be ready for usage in a real expedition in one or two decades from now on. External specialists such as Lawrence Kuznetz (NASA, Johnson Space Center) and Simon Evetts (ESA Crew Medical Support Office) offer their expertise to make sure that the development work done within PolAres can offer a small and decent contribution to the agencies planning efforts.

"Most probably, we will focus on a 200-day-transit and 30-day-sojourn scenario", Gernot Groemer states, "as this is one of the current plans for the exloration scenarios under the european Aurora-Programme". Another result which is expected from this study is the definition of interaction scenarios for the Phileas-Rover within PolAres, which is currently under development (lead: Norbert Frischauf and Aaron Salzer, both ÖWF Vienna.