My name is Thiemo, I grew up in Innsbruck and I’ve been part of the Austrian Space Forum for about one year now. I first found out about the OeWF and its missions in 2013 when my High School class got offered the opportunity to visit the Mission Support Center for the MARS2013 Analog Mission. From this day on I knew I wanted to learn more about what the OeWF does and followed all missions via social media. When I started studying physics I applied for a membership and am a happy member of the IT-Team by now.

Thiemo Haller, member of the OeWF IT-Team (c) OeWF

Since I wanted to dedicate a whole month working on projects, I decided to apply for an internship and work on my programming skills. Before starting my internship, I already knew that I would get to work on a component for the software, which receives real-time data from the suits. Since I never worked with Java (the programming language used for the software) I had to spend some time getting to know the language and how to use it. My first real task was to program a countdown which keeps track of time in case of a LOS (Loss Of Signal) with visual and auditory caution and warning alerts and signals when certain tasks would have to be performed by the user. Another project I was tasked with was putting together a video-wall for our Mission Support Center for future missions. Since I had no knowledge on this kind of system, I had to do a lot of research to find the best solution. In the course of this task I learned a lot of valuable things about budget-management and more efficient researching in general.

My everyday workplace

After quite some initial complications and a rocky start (as I said, I was quite new to Java) with the LOS-Countdown, I slowly got the hang of working on such a big project with support from other members of the IT-Team. The workflow is quite different than what I am used to from working on solo-projects, so it’s refreshing to get some variation and learn different approaches to common obstacles. It is great to have so many helpful and highly motivated colleagues around and we usually have a great time working together.

What I like most about my internship here is that I get to work with so many people from different fields of expertise. I get to talk to people with media, management, medical, economical, electrical and mechatronic backgrounds, just to name a few. Every conversation is a chance to gain some knowledge in a new field and broaden my horizon, or simply get to know another space-enthusiast.