Last week Michael started his one-month internship and this week Veronika joined us for a three-month FemTech internships.

Micheal Müller during “Hall ins All” outreach activity last weekend

Name: Michael Müller
School: Bundesrealgymnasium Lienz
Hobbies: Astronomy, Reading, Hiking

How did you get involved with the OeWF?
Two years ago Gernot Grömer gave a presentation about manned missions to Mars on my school and because of this I participated in a summer camp for astrophysics last summer, where the other participants and I spend three days with Gernot Grömer and other members of the OeWF. This was the time when I said to myself I want to be a part of this project and now I’m here.

What will you be working on?
I will be working in the spacesuit laboratory in order to support the redesign of the PLSS (Personal Life Support System) of Aouda.X, and also attending a beta testing of a program that displays parameters measured in the suit.

What else have you been doing during your time in Innsbruck?
Since I have been to Innsbruck just for a few days the probably most interesting thing I have done by now was eating ice cream.

Veronika Haberle

Name: Veronika Haberle
University: Vienna University of Technology
Studying: Bachelor in Technical Mathematics
Hobbies: Hiking, Travelling, Astronomy

How did you find out about us?
I met Olivia Haider during SpaceUp Europe 2012 in Genk, Belgium. Finally got to know an awesome association related to space in Austria. From the very first time hearing about it I was determined to get involved in the OeWF!

What will you be working on?
I will be working with the Aouda suit team on improvements of the chest pack. The goal is to (re-)design a completely new chest pack to ensure safe, effective and successful outer space missions of future Mars astronauts. For safety reasons during field tests a location service app will be implemented to the Aouda helmet on which I will be working on as well.

What else have you been doing during your time in Innsbruck?
Hiking around the beautiful scenery of mountains around Innsbruck and enjoy the culinary offers that this city provides. One of my favourite dissipation is to breathe the clean air coming directly from the mountains! :)

My (Veronika’s) very first week as an intern at the OEWF in Innsbruck
Coming straight from a summer course in Vienna with around 25 students from all over Europe, my life continued being awesome with the internship at the Austrian Space Forum in Innsbruck.
The week started straight with the 2nd Spacesuit Design Course held by Gernot Groemer. During the two days other students and I got the opportunity to learn more about the requirements and hazards of human space flight as well as how to design a proper spacesuit. We also got homework which all the participants concluded conscientiously. This start of my time here in Innsbruck gave me the ultimate motivation kick!

Veronika Haberle with our Spacesuit Lab mascot ;-)

On Wednesday things got serious – my very first working day. I got a four hours introduction about the facilities and the spacesuit, details about work and even more information from Gernot. He gave me as much time as I needed to feel comfortable and patiently answered all my questions.
My first task was to document the PLSS components. This might not sound exciting work at the first glance, but it was THE BEST work for a beginner like me. Documenting stuff can be sometimes boring, but actually documenting a spacesuit’s components got my whole enthusiasm and concentration I am able to spend.
On Thursday and Friday I was handling the task whether the gloves of the spacesuit do satisfy the needs of the NASA-STD-3000 – Man-Systems Integration Standards and was going through a 200 pages long documentation. And again one might think this was boring work, but NO! The document got my full attention and I was laughing a lot to see which detailed facts are written there. However, it is super important to have each single fact about the human body documented (like eyesight, movement, etc…) in order to design the most suitable spacesuit there has ever been.
As a summary I have to admit, I finally understand others getting deeply into things blanking out their close environment. This first week was giving me a lot of new impressions, the only word which describes it at least a bit (that comes to my mind) is AWESOMENESS. For the weekend I will be travelling to my hometown with a good feeling, lots of new impressions to share with my family and friends and with a strong need to return as soon as possible!