Born of the Analog Astronaut Community, the World’s Biggest Analog (WBA) is a volunteer-based, two weeks mission in which 16 Moon and Mars habitats across 5 continents will attempt the largest synchronized analog mission ever attempted. Three years in the making, the WBA is supporting and raising awareness for new and existing analogs globally, and creating a global education program that aims to target underserved communities. Hosted by the Austrian Space Forum, the WBA brings together 200 scientists from 25 countries for this unique opportunity.
SAM Director of Research Kai Staats brought SIMOC Live to the WBA as one of the proposed science projects. SIMOC Live is a real-time air quality monitoring extension to SIMOC, an agent-based model and Mars habitat simulation with educational web interface. Once accepted in 2024, the all-volunteer SIMOC team composed of Ezio Melotti, Franco Carbognani, and Shantanu Parmar worked to prepare a fully revised Raspberry Pi image and semi-automated configuration that enables each sensor array, no matter its location on Earth, to direct its data stream to a central repository on server. The Mission Control Center hosted by the Austrian Space Forum is then able to monitor the air quality for all of the habitats on a single computer monitor.
As such, one or more SIMOC Live sensor arrays was shipped to eight habitats on four continents such that a live data broadcast will provide a single-monitor in the Austrian Space Forum’s mission control the ability to monitor the air quality across all represented habitats, in real-time. Learn more …
