14. February 2010

2009, being the eleventh year since the foundation of the Austrian Space Forum, primarily saw great advances in the PolAres programme amongst many other projects and incentives. Lectures in schools, at exhibitions or educational programmes for children have reached an unrivalled high. Aside from these successful public events and the research and development of the ASF, a subtle change in the internal structures of the forum was undertaken, with the goal to make the ASF a more effective organization. This change was the consolidation of the service-units like the newsgroup in order to facilitate publications and the day-to-day business involving the creation of the ever growing newsletter. This also involved the effective incorporation of social media tools for the first time.

Since then, an increasing demand for information manifested itself in a many mails to infooewforg, covering a wide range of interests: from students looking for possibilities to write first scholarly papers in highschool (called Fachbereichsarbeit, preparing for the final A-level exams), marketing agencies looking for space suits to use them in professional photoshootings, to request of lectures at adult education centers.

Literally thousands of people, according to the last estimates as many as 80.000, have been introduced to our forum and our message in the course of the Innsbrucker Herbstmesse, a local fair in Innsbruck, that featured a special exhibition on Abenteuer Kosmos, or “cosmic adventures”. This exhibition was supported by ESA, FFG, Ruag Aerospace, ESP, gcs Salzburg, the University Innsbruck and many other regional partners. The Spacesuit-simulator “Aouda.X” exhibited there is a real milestone of the analogue Mars-research. Funded by the Austrian Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology as part of the “Generation.Innovation” programme, the Austrian Space Forum developed a novel Mars-spacesuit simulator in cooperation with four Tyrolean technical schools, which was field tested several times, some in cooperation with ESA, and has only recently mastered cryogenic testing at -110°C.

This sounds like everything´s working out just fine, doesn´t it? One should not be fooled by the seemingly effortless work that brought the forums’ work closer to several tens of thousand people. This has been achieved with minimal resources and by organizing thousands of hours work by our volunteers while trying to find an effective core strategy on our own future development at the same time. A very effective team, hard work, sweat and an outstanding motivation made this possible.

Dusty or motivated? – Feel free to decide yourself after reading this report! (german only!)