Space travel is currently experiencing a new hype. Astrophysicist Gernot Grömer is the founder of the Austrian Space Forum (ÖWF), an association that aims to promote the topic of space travel in Austria.
The space enthusiasts are based in Innsbruck. They’ve been working on a spacesuit simulator there for 10 years. Gernot Grömer says: “It’s by far the best tool that we can use to simulate the conditions under which people will one day live and work on Mars.“
This year's mission is called AMADEE-24. It’s being carried out by the ÖWF in cooperation with the Armenian AeroSpace Agency in the Ararat region – a place where the landscape is said to be a geological twin of the red planet. For one month, analog astronauts and a base team will simulate a stay on Mars.
However, the ÖWF doesn’t just conduct research for Mars missions. Gernot Grömer is also leading work on a nano-satellite that searches for space debris. Space may be infinite, but the Earth's nearby orbits now resemble a large garbage dump. Last year, Elon Musk's latest satellite, Adler 2, was launched into space on a SpaceX rocket.
Rocket engineer Stefan Brieschenk, who wants to make Europe independent of SpaceX, founded the Rocket Factory Augsburg in 2018. He’s working as fast as he can on a rocket that should soon be able to launch satellites into space from Europe, as cheaply as possible.