Hello everyone, my Name is Sarah and I am a 19-year-old physics student from Innsbruck. After one month of working for the Austrian Space Forum it is now my turn to tell you what I’ve experienced so far.

Sarah Madlener

My story actually started back in May when I took the first step into the suit lab and left it flashed and excited at the same time. I think everyone who has seen the Aouda Spacesuit once can agree with me that your heart dropped a little. After that first contact, I didn’t have to wait long till my first official ÖWF event came up. I have to admit that I was at least as excited as the kids were when we built the water rockets and launched them. Not only did they have a lot of fun shooting water bottles in the air, but they were fascinated by what we told them about space. At the end of the day, when I asked who would like to become an astronaut and almost every little hand shot up, I knew how important this part of the ÖWF work was.

In September my internship finally started and with that a great month of ups and (some) downs I don’t want to miss at all. All these people I got to know from all across Europe and the passion they hold for space was overwhelming.

During the European Mars Conference.

My responsibilities ranged from driving to IKEA (with a bike in the rain) to get that one missing piece to finally finish the cupboard we needed for the Dress Rehearsal, over managing the Ground Support twice. The first one was for the DH 1 and the second time was for the EMC17. Both times it was rough in the beginning but ended up well. After all I can say I learned a lot for the future, for example never to leave my cell phone at home when I am doing Ground Support. Furthermore, I had to build a thing that is called Unicorn device and it is as beautiful as the name might suggest. It enables the field crew to use the audio chat “Mumble” during the mission and provides more mobility and safety.

Working at the suitlab!

Additionally, I got the honour to be the ground support team lead for AMADEE-18 in February 2018. I am looking forward to be part of the team and experience my first Analog Mission.

In the end I just want to say thank you to everybody for the great time I had and that I am happy to see you again soon.

Having a great time as ground support at the EMC17.