TelCUBE with Mars500

Today a press conference has been held at the European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) in Madrid to talk about the simulation Mars500 with some of the crewmembers.

Mars500 is the first full-duration simulation of a human mission to Mars, in a mock-up space infrastructure faithfully replicating almost all aspects of real spaceflight – except for weightlessness, radiation and actual interplanetary spaceflight. During the almost 1.5-year duration, the international crew comprising two Europeans, three Russians and one Chinese have ‘flown’ to Mars, ‘landed’ on their destination planet and made several spacewalks on the look-a-like martian terrain. They have been faced with monotony, delayed communications and complete lack of daylight in their windowless habitat.

The crew consists of ESA-selected Diego Urbina (Italian/Colombian) and Romain Charles (French); Sukhrob Kamolov, Alexei Sitev and Alexandr Smoleevski from Russia; and Wang Yue from China. In this press conference, we have been with the representatives of ESA Diego Urbina, Romain Charles and also Dr. Elena Feichtinger, Project Manager of Mars500.

Technical University of Madrid has been represented in this meeting by students of Satellite Communications and from the Master in Space Technologies, and also by members of TelCUBE. It has been really interesting to listen to the crew talking about their experience in this simulation that could be very important to prepare future real missions to Mars. They have explained some of the purposes of the mission, such as the Verification of the methods and means of control and monitoring of the habitat, the simulation of the activity of the crew on the surface of Mars and operations during the flight and the organization of the activity of the crew and its communication with the ground-based control center.

The full conference can be watched at the ESA website, but we also want to share with us some pictures to show you what we saw.

'Castillo de Aulencia', the nice location of ESAC

Press conference

Dr. Elena Feichtinger, Romain Charles and Diego Urbina

Students of the Technical University of Madrid

TelCUBE at E-USOC

This November, the members of TelCUBE Project visited E-USOC (Spanish User Support and Operations Center) as part of the activities of the XI Week of Science. This center is specialized in research and development of space technology and microgravity science, and it is part of the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM). Its main activity is to supervise different kinds of experiments carried out in the ISS (Columbus Laboratory). Particularly, they watch over experiments dealing with Fluid Dynamics (FS Laboratory). E-USOC is also in charge of the access to some Low Gravity Platforms supervised by ESA.

During the visit, the team could observe the control room, from where communications between Earth and ISS are held, and even watch a real communication between E-USOC and other control center. E-USOC's facilities provide the infrastructure necessary to prepare experiments and operate them remotely. One of these services is the Clean Room, a special room isolated from any kind of pollution or distortion from the exterior, and it is used to test experiments before they are launched. The team visited this room, although it was observed from the ou

tside, due to the severe security measures.

Moreover, the team was shown one of the scientific experiments that are probe to be launched in a short period of time, dealing with fluid dynamics. This experiment tried to show that fluid's surface vibrations in microgravity are very different from the ones seen under normal gravity conditions (Faraday's Waves).

We are really glad to have been there and we hope to enjoy more visits like that in future.