Austrian Space Forum

The Austrian Space Forum (OeWF) is a national network of aerospace specialists and space enthusiasts. The organization serves as a communication platform between the space sector and the public and is embedded in a global network of specialists from the space industry, research and politics. Therefore, the OeWF enables the strengthening of the Austrian space sector with public outreach, technical worskhops and conferences and own space activities.

The Forum has a small, but highly active pool of professional members contributing to space endeavours, mostly in cooperation with other space organizations, both Austrian and international. The spectrum of our activities ranges from simple classroom presentations to 15.000-visitor space exhibitions, from expert reports for the Austrian federal ministry for technology to space technology transfer activities for terrestrial applications.

In 2006 the Austrian Space Forum conducted the "AustroMars" mission, a Mars analogue simulation at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah. For the first time the crew, the support team and the experiments as well as the major part of the hardware came from Austria. Apart from the scientific stimulus AustroMars also focused the public view on space activities and - closely associated with enormous involvement of the media tightly associated with massive involvement of media - presents a young scientific landscape in Austria being a top performer in the field of European space-travel.

PolAres is an interdisciplinary programme of the Austrian Space Forum in cooperation with international partners to develop strategies for human-robotic interaction procedures and to emphasise planetary protection, in preparation for a future human-robotic Mars surface expedition. Part of the PolAres program is developing an Mars analogue space suit. Since 2009 the Mars analogue space suit Aouda.X was developed and tested in several field tests and simulations.

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