Mars Analog Mission AMADEE-24 started in Armenia
Following intensive preparations, the Mars Analog Mission of the Austrian Space Forum (OeWF) - AMADEE-24 started.
AMADEE-2 is carried out in cooperation with the Armenian Space Agency. More than 200 researchers from 25 countries are involved in this international mission under Austrian leadership.
At the test site in Armenia, a crew of six highly trained analog astronauts will conduct experiments in the fields of human factors, geology and robotics to prepare for future human and robotic Mars exploration missions.
The six-person analog astronaut team comprises German public health expert Anika Mehlis, Austrian physicist Robert Wild, expert for artificial intelligence in the field of environment and sustainability from Germany Carmen Köhler, the astrophysicist Inigo Munoz Elorza from Spain, the Italian aerospace engineer Simone Paternostro, and the astrophysicist Thomas Wijnen from the Netherlands.
During the Mars Analog Mission, the six analog astronauts will live and work in a specially developed habitat and will only leave it wearing the OeWF spacesuit prototype.
Gernot Grömer, Director of the Austrian Space Forum, noted that “Our missions emulate the astronautical exploration of the Red Planet with great authenticity in order to find problems and errors already here on Earth.”
“When we will send people to Mars in probably 30 years, everything will have to be flawless, because the next workshop and the next hospital are 6 months away,” he emphasized.
“We are one of five organizations worldwide to have developed and built a spacesuit prototype that the analog astronauts will wear during their ‘spacewalks’. Our prototype simulates a spacesuit and its movement restrictions, weighs 50 kg and is equipped with medical telemetry so our analog astronauts experience their ‘spacewalks’ as Mars-like as possible. With our analog research, we test and look for weak points so that everything can go smoothly in actual use. This method makes it easier to understand the advantages, but also the limitations, of future astronautical missions on alien planets,” Gernot Grömer added.