We’re at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland
where it's HOT, its HUMID, and that means, we’re excited to welcome over 250 Summer interns from all over the United States.
These interns are studying a wide range of subjects, hoping that at the end of their internship
they’ll find a “space” of their own.
Let’s go check inside the Visitors Center and ask them some questions as they get ready for their first day of orientation.
[Music]
Swarupa: Are you excited to be here today?
I’m really excited, it’s pretty surreal actually.
This is a dream come true.
Swaupra: Are you nervous?
Yeah.
I’m a little bit nervous because it’s my first time here at NASA
but I’ve met a lot of, you know, nice people that have been helping me throughout the way
which makes me feel you know my home away from home, it’s been really nice.
Elizabeth: So what is the one thing that you’re looking forward to the most?
I think the one thing that I’m looking forward to the most is learning from other interns as well as my mentor.
I’m really excited to get to try to communicate some really complex and awesome science in a way that
people can understand and engage with and really get a lot out of.
I actually want to explore the center, want to see like the offices, how NASA works,
like get to know people that work here and you know learn a lot. I’m an accounting major but know about space more, yeah.
This is the right place I think.
I actually want to take you know a whole lot of new experiences well,
that i can take back home and tell my friends about them and encourage them to do so- you know get out of their comfort zone we know that english isn’t our first language
so that’s like a little challenging but i feel like if i can do it anyone else can do it.
I’m honestly hoping to just learn more about just like getting experience in my field
learn more about space in general so I’m really excited.
I’m looking to learn more about hardware, things related to my major, meet a lot of people and have a good time.
Swarupa: What are you going to be doing here for this Summer?
I am going to work with the mass spectrometer, it’s related to moon, and we are going to detect some of the substances that are detected on the moon using the laser ablation from the earth.
Right now it looks like I’m going to be working with hyper spectral imaging systems and plant vegetation
My projects are going to revolve around working with social media,
writing about projects that are going on at NASA and making it more digestible for a general audience
I am going to be working on the Pandora project which is a spectrometer that is used to study trace gases in Earth’s atmosphere.
So the name of my project is Modular Mechanisms for Space Flight Instruments
and I’m going to be using VHDL which is a hardware description language and maybe some PCB programs to make PCBs
This Summer I’m a Remote Sensing Analyst Intern,
so I’m working on the— EOS does Earth Search Data Tool and so I’ll be updating the metadata repository
and I think I might be doing a little bit of Python coding but I’m not entirely sure about that yet.
[Music]
Swarupa: Now that the Summer interns are finished with their orientation,
it’s time for them to meet their mentors and start their projects.
Elizabeth: If you’re interested in pursuing a NASA internship visit intern.nasa.gov
and to hear more intern stories, check out nasa.gov/goddard.
[Music Fades Out]