25 years of AustroMir: from Mozart balls to ion cannons

Franz Viehböck took off 25 years ago - the one and only Austrian in space. Researchers at TU Graz performed pioneering work in extraterrestrial materials analysis and facilitated the first ever networked communication between several locations on Earth and in space. Friday, 4 October 1991: the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra played the Blue Danube by Johann Strauss as Franz Viehböck glided into the Soviet space station "Mir". On his arrival, Franz Viehböck did not just have a red-white-red flag, Mozart scores and other Austrian specialities in his bag - to the delight of the other Cosmonauts in the Mir - he had also brought devices for 15 scientific experiments with him. Involved in this were research groups of several Austrian universities and institutions, such as Joanneum Research, which was in charge of the AustroMir project, TU Graz, the Space Research Institution, the former research centre Seibersdorf, the Universities of Graz, Innsbruck and Vienna, and a number of companies. There was a focus on medical experiments and the effects of space on the human body. The "Motomir" project examined the function of the arm and leg musculature in weightlessness using a special ergometer.