Preparing a Mars analogue mission - Flight Planning for AMADEE-20

The Austrian Space Forum (OeWF) is a research organisation specialising in conducting Mars analogue missions. To date the OeWF has conducted 12 Mars analogue missions (see e.g. [1-3]) and from the 15th of October to the 15th of November 2020 the OeWF will run the AMADEE-20 Mars simulation mission in the Negev Desert (Israel), in collaboration with the Israel Space Agency as the host agency and D-MARS. The mission will be conducted in the Ramon Crater, a Martian terrestrial analogue. A small field crew of analogue astronauts with spacesuit simulators [4] will conduct experiments, directed by a Mission support centre located in Austria, thus simulating selected aspects of a future human mission to Mars. This includes a 10-minute time delay in communications, reflecting the signal travel time between Earth and Mars. The Flight Planning (FP) team schedules all activities to be conducted in the field, based on requirements posed by experiments, scientific priorities and operational constraints [5]. The preparations of the FP team for this mission began in Summer 2019, a year and a half before mission start. Within the FP team "coordinators" were assigned to each of the 16 experiments participating in the mission. These experiments include geological sampling, drone testing, contamination testing, rover operations, and psychological and medical evaluations. The role of the FP coordinators is to liaise with the Principal Investigators of experiments to produce the Standard Experiment Information Forms (SEIFs) which feed into the development of experiment procedures. Based on these data the FP team produces the Mission Plan, a rough schedule developed prior to the mission. During the mission this plan is to be detailed and adapted to short term developments, including scheduling changes as the mission progresses. The work of the FP team also includes the production of traverse maps for the mission, specifying locations for experiments to be undertaken, employing a custom-developed geodata workflow [6], using QGIS Geospatial Information System and GeoServer software, aerial imagery and elevation data. Here, we will present the ongoing work of the FP team in planning the AMADEE-20 mission. We will also discuss the lessons learnt from the mission planning, in order to inform future Mars simulation endeavours aimed at advancing our capabilities for future crewed missions to Mars. [1] C. Orgel, et al., Scientific results and lessons learned from an integrated crewed Mars exploration simulation at the Rio Tinto Mars analogue site, Acta Astronautica. 94 (2014) 736-748, [2] G. Groemer, et al., The MARS2013 Mars Analog Mission, Astrobiology. 14 (2014) 360-376, [3] G. Groemer, et al., The AMADEE-15 Mars simulation, Acta Astronautica. 129 (2016) 277-290, [4] G. Groemer, et al., The Aouda.X Space Suit Simulator and Its Applications to Astrobiology, Astrobiology. 12 (2012) 125-134, [5] S. Hettrich et al., Efficiency Analysis of the MARS2013 Planning Strategy, Astrobiology. 14 (2014) 377-390, [6] N. Sejkora et al., Geodata workflow for the AMADEE-18 Mars analog mission, in: EPSC Abstracts, Berlin, Germany, 2018: pp. EPSC2018-442.