World Space Week 2005 Report

The United Nations provided materials to schools across Austria as part of its global World Space Week 2005 Mars Base Design competition. 

From 6^th to 9^th of October 2005 the Austrian space event of the year 2005 - the "SpaceTime Austria 2005" - took place in the picturesque and unique set-up of the Hangar-7 of Red Bull in Salzburg, Austria.

SpaceTime Austria 2005 was conducted as part of the World Space Week and the Long Night of the Museums and designed to make up for multi-facetted event featuring both a space conference and exhibition for the general public. Co-organised by the Austrian Space Forum (http://www.oewf.org), the State Secretary for Innovation and Research of the Austrian Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology and the European Space Agency, supported by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency and Austrospace, the event was a major success.

More than 150 show pieces, covering the whole spectrum of space flight, attracted 10315 visitors into the Hangar-7 in the four days of the exhibition. On Saturday, October 8, 4350 spectators stormed the SpaceTime, a new visitor record in the history of the Hangar-7.

Among the most impressive exhibits were for sure the different models provided by ESA; the ISS in scale 1:20, the satellites Envisat, Mars Express, Galileo and SOHO in scale 1:4 and an impressive Titan diorama together with a 1:1 model of the Huygens probe. Other marvellous show pieces, provided by private parties, were the original SOKOL-2 space suit of Jean-Pierre Haigneré; space stamps, which were flown onboard of SALJUT, MIR and the ISS; a 1.5 m big and illumined sphere shaped space ship out of the Perry Rhodan series; Klingon swords; Yoda, the Jedi master; space nutrition of all sorts (including a plastic bag of Vodka) as well as hygiene articles, which were/are used by the astronauts onboard of the different space stations.

Memorabilia with a strong Austrian connection were the original moon rocks, flown with a small Austrian flag on board of Apollo 11, which were packed together after the first manned Moon mission and presented to the Austrian government by the USA.

The most massive exhibit was an iron meteorite; although only as big as two hands it nevertheless had a mass of 22 kg. Much lighter was the smallest fly able rocket of the world; with a length of only 22 mm long it has an entry in the Guiness book of records for having achieved an altitude of more than 4 meters.

The focus of attention of the younger spectators of the exhibition lay on the two Mars rovers of the Austrian space forum. Presented in 4 x 5 m Mars diorama, the visitors were invited to operate the smaller one, via onboard cameras to drive through the artificial craters and rocks. The larger one was put on display only, but was also of high attraction, as it will perform a mission (dubbed "AustroMars") in spring 2006, where it will drive fully autonomous through the desert of Utah in the USA, remote controlled over the Internet out of a Mission Control Center in Austria.

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