Österreichisches Weltraum Forum / Austrian Space Forum

07/08/2026

Do you know a young explorer who wants to go on a cosmic adventure? 🪐

On September 6th, the OeWF will be at the Kinderklangwolke in Linz, where dozens of interactive stations invite you to play, try things out, and discover. We'll have our Delta spacesuits there - try one on and feel what it's like. A rover will be waiting for you to see how we explore other worlds. And we're bringing astronomy for all senses, so you don't just learn about the stars, you experience them. 🧑‍🚀

We're part of a whole space village designed for this event, where you research, experiment, and discover why the cosmos captures our imagination. No lectures, no barriers between you and the adventure. Just hands-on stations where you can try things, ask questions, and learn from people who actually explore space. 🔭

Find out more: https://esero.at/de/kinderklangwolke-2026/

06/08/2026

3000+ scientists, engineers and space agency delegates. 3262 scheduled talks and 160 distinct symposia in one city: The COSPAR Scientific Assembly is currently taking place in Florence, Italy.
We are exhibiting our SPHERE project at COSPAR, an European Union funded space education project involving students from Austria, Germany, Portugal, Poland and Greece to do Mars analog missions.
Visit us and meet Olivia Drayson, our newly graduated analog astronaut, and Angelos Lazoudis Senior Researcher from our project partner Ellinogermaniki Agogi (EA).

Learn more: https://ow.ly/eX8i50ZwMrW

COSPAR SPHEREproject
NUCLIO - Núcleo Interactivo de Astronomia
Ellinogermaniki Agogi
Space is More
Technical University of Munich
Observatório Lago Alqueva

05/08/2026

Portugal gets its own experiment slot on AMADEE-27. Here's how to apply. 🚀🌍

Analog missions are the ultimate testing ground. Before we ever send humans to the Red Planet, we test habitats, life-support systems, robotics, and human factors in extreme, Mars-like environments right here on Earth.

Now, researchers and students based in Portugal 🇵🇹 have a unique, dedicated pathway to be part of this journey. In close cooperation, we have launched a targeted Announcement of Opportunity (AO) exclusively tailored for the Portuguese research ecosystem. This means dedicated slots are waiting for your innovative ideas, payloads, and scientific studies to be integrated into our rigorous analog operations. 🧑‍🚀

Head over to https://ow.ly/ruTn50ZvWe4. We have published and linked the official PDF containing all the details, requirements, and deadlines for this specific call. Please note: This particular call is exclusively dedicated to researchers and/or students based in Portugal.

Let’s push the boundaries of science together—from Lisbon, Coimbra, Porto, and beyond, all the way to Mars! 🔴✨

04/08/2026

Our summer interns are building a science instrument for AMADEE-27. Intern Maxime Poulain reports on the latest phase of the Caillou project — a compact Raman spectrometer planned for deployment at the analog Mars mission in Monsaraz, Portugal in April 2027.

Caillou integrates an optical imaging subsystem, laser guidance, and onboard processing into a 3D-printed modular enclosure, all within a mass budget of around 500 grams.

This article covers the AIV phase: Assembly, Integration, and Verification. That means translating a CAD model into a physical prototype that can survive the conditions of an analog Mars mission — dust, shock, vibration, and direct sunlight interference during spectral measurements.

The process involved fitting a Raspberry Pi into a custom-designed enclosure, aligning the camera and laser guide for precise target acquisition, and verifying that the sample chamber blocks ambient light during measurements.

The Caillou instrument is not a training exercise. It is scheduled to fly with the AMADEE-27 crew in the field.

Read the full article via the link below.
https://oewf.org/en/2026/08/from-cad-models-to-physical-prototype-hardware-implementation-and-aiv-of-the-caillou-instrument/

This article describes the ongoing work of our interns on the Caillou project – a synthetic Raman spectrometer for AMADEE-27. To learn more about idea and design process read this article: https://oewf.org/en/2026/06/synthetic-raman-spectrometer-for-amadee-27/. The second article describes the pro...

03/08/2026

| Experiment 3/15 · A 24-minute emergency reveals what months of training can't.

You can train for procedures. You can rehearse radio protocol. You can study emergency checklists until you know them by heart. What you cannot simulate in advance is how your team actually functions when something goes wrong for real.

PRESSURE is a crew psychology experiment running during AMADEE-27, our Mars analog mission in Monsaraz, Portugal. At some point during EVA operations, Mission Control initiates a simulated emergency. The EVA crew has 24 minutes to resolve it, using only radio communication, established procedures, and each other. They do not know when it will happen.

Before and after the mission, crew members complete a set of psychological assessments including personality profiling, workload ratings, and sleep quality monitoring. They also complete the Team Meter, a dual-rating tool that captures both how each person perceives their own contribution and how their peers perceive it. The gap between those two scores is the data point researchers are most interested in: a large discrepancy between self-perception and peer perception has been identified as a potential early-warning indicator of coordination risk.

The emergency scenario makes those gaps visible under pressure. Resolution time, communication quality, leadership emergence, and protocol accuracy are all logged. So is what happens to team cohesion scores before and after the event.

Stress didn't break the team. It revealed it.

ℹ️Comics by Bera Loretto using AI

02/08/2026

A spacesuit is a spacecraft you wear. That's not a metaphor, it's the engineering reality our analog astronaut class discovered firsthand during their training weekends — and that Ludovica Valentini and Olivia Drayson put into words in a new blog post.

The Aouda spacesuit simulator replicates the core constraints of a planetary EVA suit: 50 kg of weight, restricted joint movement via an exoskeleton, three layers of gloves that reduce fine motor control, and a helmet that cuts off direct communication with the suit tech team. Donning takes around three hours and follows a precise step-by-step procedure. Each stage depends on teamwork and trust between the analog astronaut and the suit technicians.

This kind of training matters because analog missions only produce useful data if the suit conditions are realistic. Instruments, sampling procedures, and team communication protocols all need to be tested under the same constraints a crew would face on Mars. The Aouda makes that possible on Earth.

Read their blog post to find out what it feels like when the helmet goes on and all systems are go for EVA.

🔗 https://oewf.org/en/2026/08/a-spacesuit-fit-for-a-princess/

31/07/2026

What it takes to become a Mars explorer. 🚀 It’s one thing to read about Mars in a textbook. It’s another thing entirely to navigate rugged, alien-like terrain while managing mission-critical tasks under the pressure of simulated space conditions.

At the Austrian Space Forum (OeWF), we often get asked: “What does the path to becoming an analog astronaut actually look like?” 🧑‍🚀👩‍🚀

The answer lies in the sweat, precision, and teamwork of our Training Blocks. Today, we are happy to share a perspective directly from the field. One of our Junior Analog Astronauts (JAAs), Sebastian Krainz, has penned a deep dive into Training Block 4:

The bridge to the Red Planet, this phase is where the "analog" truly meets the "astronaut." After months of technical briefings and suit-handling drills, our Class of 2026 trainees stepped into the great outdoors to test their mettle. In this block the group completed an adventurous first-aid training course in the field, undertook a search and rescue exercise, and attempted to establish an internet connection in the Ehnbachklamm gorge.

📖 Read Sebastian's blog post here: https://ow.ly/jRc350ZuMEP

30/07/2026

If you want to be in the room where the future of analog space research is shaped, this is your chance. 🚀

🎟️ Early bird tickets for the Analog Astronaut Conference 2027 are now available!

Join researchers, engineers, mission specialists, students, and space enthusiasts from around the world to explore the latest developments in analog astronautics, planetary exploration, and human spaceflight.

Secure your spot early and be part of the conversations driving the future of space exploration.

🔗 Get your ticket: https://ow.ly/WpwE50ZuCET

📷: AAC

27/07/2026

| Experiment 2/15 · Who leads when the planet doesn't care about your rank?

Most leadership research happens in controlled settings. ICE-LEAD takes a different approach: run the same experiment in two of the most extreme isolated environments on Earth, and compare what you find.

1️⃣One group: the analog astronaut crew of AMADEE-27, our Mars analog mission running in Monsaraz, Portugal.
2️⃣The other: overwintering teams at Neumayer Station III, the German research station in Antarctica.
Same research framework. Two fundamentally different analog environments. That cross-analog comparison is what makes ICE-LEAD scientifically distinct.

The experiment tracks leadership dynamics, decision-making under pressure, role clarity, team cohesion, and expectation management. Data collection combines pre- and post-mission interviews, in-mission video diaries recorded under simulated communication delay, and repeated standardised questionnaires administered throughout the mission. Crucially, researchers also collect data from Mission Control and operational staff, not just the crew inside the habitat, capturing how leadership and communication function across the full mission architecture.

When the same patterns appear in both a Mars analog in Portugal and an Antarctic winter-over station, they stop being mission-specific observations. They become something more transferable: evidence about how humans organise themselves under isolation, confinement, and operational pressure, regardless of the environment.

That kind of generalisable data is exactly what future long-duration mission design needs.

ℹ️Comics were AI generated by Bera Loretto

26/07/2026

What does it take to become an analog astronaut? According to Claudia Gollner and Nathan Pili from OeWF's Analog Astronaut Class of 2026: curiosity, and the courage to keep learning.

In their latest blog post, they write about an encounter that caught them off guard during the selection process: the Junior Analog Astronauts. Young students who don't just observe the OeWF analog astronaut selection from a distance, they participate in it. They assist during anthropometrics sessions, act as audience and judges at the "inspire me" station, and document as journalists the press conference at the Tiroler Versicherung.

The analog astronaut candidates were asked to give 10-minute presentations on their research to inspire these students. It didn't go quite as expected. The students' English was well above average. Their base knowledge was solid. Their questions ranged from "can you destroy a planet with a laser?" to "will space mushrooms be edible?" — and their curiosity seemed endless.

"We're unsure if we managed to inspire them," Claudia and Nathan write. "But surely, they inspired us."

The Junior Analog Astronauts program connects young people directly with real space research — not through classroom theory, but through hands-on contact with the people doing the work. No superhero credentials required.

Read the full blog post: https://oewf.org/en/2026/07/junior-analog-astronaut-program/