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At one of the most renowned science-based organizations in the world, there is still space for creativity.

Cole Corcoran ’25, a film and media arts major, found that out this summer. After watching "For All Mankind," a drama series that explores what might happen if the space race had not ended, he wondered about internship opportunities with NASA.

He did some research and applied to several NASA jobs.  He landed at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL, as a video procedure and “vammer” intern, which includes virtual, augmented and mixed reality.

As a ”vammer,” Corcoran said half of his job was conducting a trade study to assist in selecting hardware and software to start developing virtual augmented reality capabilities to use on the space station. The other half, he explained, was developing text procedures, so astronauts can follow along with a procedure on an iPad.

“My job was developing a guide for the people who developed the experiments to follow, so like, ‘OK, if I want to do it this way, here's what I need to put in these videos to make sure my science gets done correctly,’” Corcoran said.

Another UTampa student, Anthony Lane Jr. ’27, also interned with NASA this summer, and as a mathematics major, he had, perhaps, a more expected background for the space industry. He spent the summer at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX.

Lane, who said he prefers logic over creativity, was a mathematics and statistics trainee, where he helped set up testing environments for the computers that go into space.

“I helped fix software tools that were used by flight controllers,” he said.

In order to help interns understand the complexities of procedures, NASA conducted “Space Ops Academy,” a week of higher-level training that explained what each department does, Corcoran said.

By the time Corcoran and another intern moved onto the video procedure project, they understood the ins and outs of what they needed for that specific project.

Corcoran said his documentary filmmaking class helped to prepare him for NASA, due to the real-world nature of the assignments and his learning how to decipher what clients want. The other class that helped to prepare him was digital media.

“I would overall describe it (the experience) as amazing, definitely the best internship experience I've had yet, and I would recommend it. Yeah, 100%,” he said.