Wow, I mean first I really can't believe I got an internship with NASA being that it is so competitive. I began applying at the end of June and got an offer at the end of July for a Software/Machine Learning position with the Safety department at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. Probably the most important phone call I have ever received.
My first week has been VERY exciting and interesting. I got to MD just after the front end of hurricane Hilary blew through Las Vegas. It was a pretty chill week leading up to my first day. Just relaxed and caught up on some work. This last Monday, the 28th, was my first official day and it was a wild one. Orientation began at 9am and carried on until noon. I got to meet with some of the other interns, collected a bunch of goodies and speak with some of the employees that were there to present us with some of the cool groups within the NASA ecosystem. After that I collected my badge and then met with my mentor. She is so sweet, and I'm honored that she selected me to work with her! We discussed the project that myself and another intern whom I will be working with through this fall internship will be working on.
Goddard is a massive campus with 37 buildings that sit on 1270 acres (about twice the area of Central Park in New York City) of land! I ended my day with a tour of a building that has a bunch of mission monitoring and communications. Extremely cool. My second day began with me going to the Goddard Awards Ceremony. Wild experience, it was very cool to see who and what people/teams get recognized for at NASA. After the Ceremony, I got another tour of a few more buildings. One including where they built and tested the James Webb Space Telescope! Now, the Roman Space Telescope is being worked on there and I was able to see up close some of the components in the clean room! I rounded out my second day with some more research on how to go about our project. Goddard employees still operate on a hybrid work schedule, so the rest of my week was conducted in my apartment because my mentor was going to be out of the office. I worked with my partner, and we are currently mapping out our project for a final project proposal to present to our mentor.
So far this has been a surreal experience and I'm happy to be here! I think the next 15 weeks will be a blast and I'm excited to learn as much as possible.
