Ramon Crater: Through the door of the expedition base, a few short steps to the left, an autonomous rover passes. Some giant leaps to the right are an array of solar panels. The landscape is rocky, mountainous, reddish in colour. objectively it looks like Mars planet.
here, in ramen crater In the deserts of southern Israel, a team of six – five men and one woman – have begun to simulate what it would be like to live on the Red Planet for about a month.
Their AMADEE-20 habitat is nestled beneath a rocky outcrop. Inside they sleep, eat and experiment. Outside they wear fake space suits equipped with cameras, microphones and self-contained breathing systems.
Austrian Space Forum Director Gernot Gromer said, “We have the motto of failing fast, failing cheap and having a rapid learning curve. Because for every mistake we make here on Earth, we hope that we Won’t repeat it on Mars.” .
The Austrian consortium is running this project together with Israel Space Agency and the local group D-MARS.
Recently several Mars probes with robotic rovers have attracted fans of astronomy around the world NASAof persistence and, for the first time, helicopters Simplicity, offers a glimpse of the planet’s surface. But a manned mission is likely to take more than a decade.
With AMADEE-20, which was due in 2020 but was postponed due to COVID-19, the team hopes to bring new insights that will help prepare for the mission when it arrives.
“At this point in time, the habitat is the most complex, most modern analog research station on the planet,” said Gromer, standing next to the 120-square-metre (1,300-sq ft) structure the size of two large, connected yurts.
Six team members are constantly on camera, their vital signs monitored, movements inside them are monitored to analyze preferred places for congregation. All this in order to better understand the human factor, Gromer said.
Outside, other engineers and experts work with drones and rovers to improve autonomous navigation and mapping in a world where GPS is not available.
In total they will conduct more than 20 experiments in fields including geology, biology and medicine and hope to publish some of the results when they are finished.
“We are six people working in a tight space under a lot of pressure to do a lot of tests. There are bound to be challenges,” said Elon Tenzer, 36, wearing a space suit, which weighs about 50 kilograms (110 pounds). of weight. Device. “But I have confidence in our crew that we have been able to overcome those challenges.”
here, in ramen crater In the deserts of southern Israel, a team of six – five men and one woman – have begun to simulate what it would be like to live on the Red Planet for about a month.
Their AMADEE-20 habitat is nestled beneath a rocky outcrop. Inside they sleep, eat and experiment. Outside they wear fake space suits equipped with cameras, microphones and self-contained breathing systems.
Austrian Space Forum Director Gernot Gromer said, “We have the motto of failing fast, failing cheap and having a rapid learning curve. Because for every mistake we make here on Earth, we hope that we Won’t repeat it on Mars.” .
The Austrian consortium is running this project together with Israel Space Agency and the local group D-MARS.
Recently several Mars probes with robotic rovers have attracted fans of astronomy around the world NASAof persistence and, for the first time, helicopters Simplicity, offers a glimpse of the planet’s surface. But a manned mission is likely to take more than a decade.
With AMADEE-20, which was due in 2020 but was postponed due to COVID-19, the team hopes to bring new insights that will help prepare for the mission when it arrives.
“At this point in time, the habitat is the most complex, most modern analog research station on the planet,” said Gromer, standing next to the 120-square-metre (1,300-sq ft) structure the size of two large, connected yurts.
Six team members are constantly on camera, their vital signs monitored, movements inside them are monitored to analyze preferred places for congregation. All this in order to better understand the human factor, Gromer said.
Outside, other engineers and experts work with drones and rovers to improve autonomous navigation and mapping in a world where GPS is not available.
In total they will conduct more than 20 experiments in fields including geology, biology and medicine and hope to publish some of the results when they are finished.
“We are six people working in a tight space under a lot of pressure to do a lot of tests. There are bound to be challenges,” said Elon Tenzer, 36, wearing a space suit, which weighs about 50 kilograms (110 pounds). of weight. Device. “But I have confidence in our crew that we have been able to overcome those challenges.”
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