My name is Margot Girard and I am an aerospace engineering student from France. I study at ESTACA, an engineering school specialized in means of transport and I found the OeWF through my school’s career center. I then went on the Austrian Space Forum’s website to learn more about it and I decided to apply because working on Mars analog research seemed to be an amazing opportunity, and amazing it was!

I arrived in Innsbruck at the end of April 2025 and spent four months as an intern at the OeWF. During my time here, I worked on the project management of the World’s Biggest Analog (WBA). The WBA is a mission which will take place in October 2025. It is the biggest analog mission ever created as it will allow over 15 habitats on 5 continents to work together. The aim of this mission is to conduct a series of experiments on various subjects: analyzing how the analog astronauts take decisions in an isolated yet crowded environment, testing life support devices and even building a legal framework for peaceful space communities, just to name a few. The data collected will help the development of future manned missions going to Mars and bring Humankind to another planet.

One of my tasks was to select the volunteers that would staff the MICO-VIENNA, which will be the coordination center of the WBA located in Austria. I created a staffing table to assign each person to a specific role and then sent everyone emails to notify them that they were selected. When they got back to me, a lot of them had questions that I answered and soon the team of the MICO-VIENNA was (almost) formed.

Before the mission, it was critical to provide these volunteers with training material so that they were ready to work in October. In collaboration with Titouan, another (French) intern working at the OeWF, I wrote the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) as well as the role sheets for the WBA. The SOPs contain all the vital information about how the MICO-VIENNA is run, what to do in contingency situations and describe the chain of command. The role sheets are here to explain the tasks of every role in the MICO-VIENNA and how to accomplish them. Writing them gave me a very precise understanding of the responsibilities and interactions of every role. I even got to shoot a video starring my coworker Marcus to explain to the volunteers how the MICO-VIENNA works. 

I also got to participate in meetings with most of the habitats joining WBA. It was interesting to see how differently they are built and how they recreate a Martian environment. Getting to know some of the world’s most advanced habitats was definitely one of the highlights of this internship.  These meetings allowed us to have a more precise idea of how these habitats functioned and gave us more situational awareness for the WBA. 

Even though the WBA occupied most of my time, it is not the only project I worked on, as I also worked on the delta-suit helmets. This analog spacesuit is made for missions for teenagers and we needed two more of the suit’s helmets. The process starts with a big transparent ball of plastic that needs to be cut to fit the neck ring. Then you have to create openings for the fans and the wires and finally spray-paint everything. I only worked on the cutting part which was done with a Dremel. For safety purposes, it is mandatory to wear a mask, googles and gloves when using this power tool and I remember sweating while cutting because it was a pretty hot day in Innsbruck. Nevertheless, having a functioning product at the end of the process was very gratifying. 

I also got to test the Vertical Treadmill Facility present at the suitlab. This device is specially made to recreate different gravitational pulls from different celestial objects like the Moon or Mars. It allows researchers to study the difference in movement when the gravitational field changes. Running on 0.17g (Moon) and 0.38g (Mars) was great, as I felt a lot lighter and I was able to take longer steps. 

This internship was a great opportunity for me to learn more about the analog research world and the variety of the tasks I was assigned gave me a great overview of this fascinating field. I learned a lot during those four months, from project management to video editing and I enjoyed every minute of it.

The OeWF could not bring such fascinating project to life without the people to work on them. I was very lucky to meet some of them in this very international environment. I would like to thank Gernot Grömer, director of the OeWF for his guidance and advice, as well as Leonie Hahn, Titouan Beyly, Marcus Ake, Tamara Crepuljarevic, Carolina Messner, Elias Brassé-Luxbauer, Leo Affenzeller and Daniel Antala, my coworkers, for their help, friendship, and warm welcome at the OeWF.

Author: Margot Girard