Mars Dust Into Thrust: NASA Co-Op #2 Week One

NASA Co-Op Week 12: Makers & 3D Printers

Well-being of a generation can be measured by the number of children who attend a Maker Faire. Houston's George R Brown Convention Center was filled with programmers, 3D printers,hand made creations, geeky gear and folks passionate about their ability to create. Houston Maker Faire featured 150 booths, soap makers, FIRST/ VEX robotics teams, LEGO builders and cosplay costume makers. Us NASA interns and Co-Ops set up a booth sharing about career opportunities, letting students share ideas with NASA and coloring pages with kids. Folks tried on an Apollo 11 helmet and space walk glove.

WAYS TO GET INVOLVED

Apply for a NASA internship open now, login to apply. Sooner the better. There are also fellowships and scholarships available: https://intern.nasa.gov/ossi/web/students/login/

Mentor a FIRST Robotics team. Teams with students age K-12:

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/coachesmentors

Apply to be a NASA Community College Aerospace Scholar open now: https://nas.okstate.edu/ncas/

Activity sheets for students: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/about/resources/jscfacts/activity_coloring_sheets.html

Co-Op for NASA. What does this mean? Flip-flop between working at NASA and studying in college. This is how NASA hires a majority of their Civil Servants. Job openings are updated every week or so: http://nasajobs.nasa.gov/studentopps/employment/opportunities.htm

Accomplishments this week at NASA: https://youtu.be/4iaScOqvI64

Full-time positions at NASA. Use this website and simply search "NASA": https://www.usajobs.gov/

Watch the Super Blood Moon live now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgv0Z8Q2OIQ

Current Mission Control

Directs football field sized International Space Station which orbits every 90min

Intern Week 1: Code in a Storm

Comment your code and batten down the hatches. One week into my NASA intern experience and I have become well aquainted with the LabVIEW programming language and Houston's tropical storms.

LabVIEW is a visual programming language where instead of writing lines of code to make a "while loop" you literally draw a loop around the function you want to repeat. Many FIRST Robotics teams and rapid prototyping engineers use LabVIEW. With this programming language I will translate packets of data from Orion Deep Space Habitat's devices to meaningful data and then display that data on a user interface. I'm still pinching myself because not only do I get to work alongside talented scientists but I am helping advance a project I worked on while interning at NASA Glenn Research Center in 2013. Some of the devices that I am translating data for, such as a solar power regulator, are devices I made a circuit board for at Glenn.

I captured pictures of The HIVE (Human Integrated Vehicles & Environments) lab we work in primarily because we were advised to cover the tech gear in plastic bags in preparation for a pending tropical storm. Coming from the icy tundra of Minnesota I am far from used to tropical storm and flood prep. Cutting long strips of plastic sheets with large industrial scissors I felt like one of Cinderella's woodland helpers. Now the Orion mock up is ready to meet Prince Charming at the ball.

Looking forward to creating schematics of the packet translator in Visio and making the translation process more autonomous this week!

Why Should Anyone Listen?  Day Three NCCWSL

Three of the biggest mistakes women speakers make include; apologizing, not including quality humor, and not taking up space on stage - according to Nancy Denney. Denney is a professional speaker and speech coach who has opened for celebrities like Dr.Phil, owns a publishing company, and visited 900 college campuses. This "Be Better: Enhamced Speaking Skills for Women" workshop was a component that made this conference worth while. Tips you can apply to become a more competent and effective speaker include...

* Practice, practice practice - practice longer than it took to formulate your speech.

* Make meaningful controlled gestures while speaking.

* Memorize your speech but don't sound robotic during delivery.

* Think on the fly during your speech to keep your audience engaged and connected.

* Have someone introduce you to establish credibility.

* Continue to establish your credibility throughout the speech.

* Remember that you are worth listening too, you are the expert and there is a reason you are up there speaking and no one else.

News show host Melissa Harris-Perry expressed the value of women contributions in college, community and congress. Harris-Perry is an author, Ph.D., and professor. She shared the need to teach the history of underrepresented individuals and recognizing them in public spaces. After this keynote I am much more interested in learning and respecting history than when I bumbled through K-12 history classes. Her "call to action" for us included holding ourselves and others accountable to vote in elections, listen to stories of members in our communities and be mindful of the where we get our news from. Even as a show host Harris-Perry advises we not get news from major networks rather with a grain of salt from public radio and podcasts.

Reflections of the day were "Does it matter what women know?", "Why should anyone listen to you?" and "What if we had taken her seriously?". Ways we can be heard include being confident in your competence of a subject, walk your talk and back up your views with fact. Women as a whole need to improve on being effective communicators and the whole country can improve on being better listeners.

Following a keynote, two workshops, a career fair, a graduate school fair, and lunch we were bused out to D.C. to sight see. My group power walked around hitting all the major monuments!

NASA Meets Super Bowl LI

Super Bowl has taken over Houston and NASA! VIPs have been touring all week with cameras flashing and film rolling. Despite the excitement work at Johnson continues uninterrupted. During work hours we are the entertainment viewed by the VIPs as we test, train and support space missions. In fact, today I conducted user testing in the Space Vehicle Mock Up Facility, a facility that feels like a fish bowl as tour goers check out Space Station and Orion training mock-ups. Heads down and clip boards out we user tested a device for on board International Space Station. However, last week NASA put together an opportunity to meet retired NFL players during lunch to get our Super Bowl fill before the big week. 

NASA has a huge presence at Super Bowl events and is expected to be featured during on the big screen during pre-game shows and game. There has been film crews running around Johnson and other related centers, I will be watching for some NASA love on TV Sunday! Here is a TV Guide of when coverage will start for those who don't get a newspaper: http://www.tvguide.com/listings/ The Fox Super Bowl Kick Off starts at 12:00pmCT Noon and the game starts at 5:30pmCT. Already NASA has taken over downtown Houston with the Orion Capsule, space booths and a giant drop tower that virtually send you to Mars and back. NASA has also made a number of Super Bowl related videos and social media posts found below...

NASA Referees Test of Footballs vs. Webb Telescope ^

Referee Robonaut: Robot Preforms Football Signals^

NASA Team! Where innovation meets sports.^

Journalists and bloggers attend NASA Social to ask astronauts about SuperBowl related questions. ^

Yahoo's Tony Sirusa rides in the Modular Robotic Vehicle^

Enjoy the game Sunday!

A dozen NASA Interns from Johnson Space Center are road tripping to Kennedy Space Center to tour and watch the launch tomorrow October 30th. The United Launch Alliance (ULA) are launching a GPS into semi-synchronous circular orbit about 11,000 nautical miles over Earth's surface. This GPS will help military personnel and civilians navigate providing data. WATCH THE LAUNCH here October 30th 12:17pm EDT: http://www.ulalaunch.com/nasa.aspx Mission Overview: http://www.ulalaunch.com/uploads/docs/Mission_Booklets/AV/av_gpsiif11_mob.pdf More About Atlas V: http://www.ulalaunch.com/atlas-v-to-launch-gps-iif11.aspx Rocket photo by ULA

Every time I Google my University of Minnesota Duluth initials, "UMD", results for University of Maryland appear. Since the leadership conference is held at U of Maryland, I get to meet the infamous university that plagues my peers' web browsers. My adventure began driving to Hibbing, Minnesota's Airport through the red painted ore hills of the Iron Range. Middle Precambrian treasures tempt to be excavated, awaiting America to be great again. Adorned with big game trophies Hibbing Airport's pace greatly differed from Minneapolis, Minnesota's metropolis of travel. Minneapolis has every reasonable pH of bottled water for sale, designated therapy dogs and indoor golf. Upon arrival in D.C. I scuffled to a shuttle, scooted around cities, and eventually meandered to the other UMD. I was welcomed by boxes of chocolate Luna Bars, a packed itenerary and a gaggle of gals ready to fine tune leadership. Tomorrow holds a trip to Capitol Hill to hear from a panel of D.C. professionals and the NCCWSL (National Conference for College Women Student Leaders pronounced "Nick Whistle").

NASA Co-Op Week 11: Leaky Space Station

Space Walk My latest opportunity to sit console was during a spacewalk (extravehicular activity/ EVA) by Scott Kelly and Kjell Lindgren. They were on a mission to upkeep the International Space Station's ailing structures. One of the primary tasks was to fix an ammonia leak originally identified in 2012. Media dressed this leak up with red flags and flashing lights, however, NASA predicted this fault to occur given the age of ISS and the nature of its climate control system. Since the ISS is a closed loop system the interior produces a lot of heat from astronauts and their hardware, water is used to cool the space station, the energy is then transferred to ammonia, and lastly into giant radiators. This 6.5 hour long EVA consisted of mating power cables, tubes valves, and checking integrity of systems. During the EVA I took flight notes on the procedures Scott and Kjell were running. I was to report what step each of them were on to the PLUTO flight controller to my right.

Grace Hopper Action Items Something that was scary but rewarding was presenting to my branch at NASA about what I learned at GHC and even challenged them with three action items... 1)Make the work place welcoming (paid parent leave, mentoring and celebrating results over hours), 2) Educating the community about how cool STEM is. 3) Communicating Effectively. I encourage you all to present action items to your current employers, student group, or college professionals after attending conferences.

Astronaut Training Development I thought I had made a pretty good astronaut training video... until I put it in front of user testers. I learned I didn't even effectively communicate how to turn the device on right! Back to the drawing board for me. I had 17 users of various ages, disciplines, personalities and technology experience test the training to insure I was catering to everyone. After reviewing helpful feedback I edited the training video again so the messages were clearer.

WAYS TO GET INVOLVED NASA summer internship applications now open: https://intern.nasa.gov/ossi/web/public/main/ Learn to code: https://techprep.fb.com/get-started/ Accomplishments this week at NASA: https://youtu.be/NPLPmdFx2yw Houston Maker Faire Nov14 (3D Printing, Robots): http://www.houstonmakerfaire.com/ Astronaut Kjell plays the bagpipes: https://youtu.be/7DWzmq9e0Lw

Intern Week 5: Astronauts, Shuttles and Excitement

Excitement is unavoidable after experiencing a week like this. Attending an exclusive unveiling of TIME's new Documentary Series 'A Year in Space', creating a display for a water distiller on board a space habitat, meeting Astronaut Clayton Anderson, touring the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility, and listening to Ginger Kerrick speak about her journey through NASA. Where do I start?

A Year In Space

"We must test the only hardware we didn't design, the human body". Jeffrey Kluger, Author of Apollo 13, reflects on the importance of Scott Kelly's year long mission in space. Two summers ago during my internship at NASA Glenn I was frustrated with how slowly our journey to Mars was taking. Even co-workers and fellow interns were perturbed by what seemed to be minimal progress. What I didn't understand at the time is that there are many variables to test, that are currently being tested, before we can ethically send a human to Mars. Scott Kelly's mission is one of those trial runs to learn about the effects of long duration space flight. During the unveiling we watched the first to episodes of 'A Year in Space', produced by Jonathan Woods, which captures Scott Kelly's professional and personal trials and tribulations while preparing for the mission. The first two episodes were cinematically spectacular and emotionally captivating. You can watch them here:

http://time.com/space-nasa-scott-kelly-mission/

Distiller Interface

Resources are extremely precious, especially if you are 250 miles or further (distance of the ISS) away from spaceship Earth. Among the human essentials for life absent in the big black vacuum of space is water. According to NASA's Consolidated Launch Schedule approximately 420 kg of water (887 bottles of water) has been transported to the International Space Station (ISS). This may seem like a lot of water however it is used for consumption, washing, experimenting, cooking, and many more activites. ISS has a highly efficient distiller system which takes the waste water and separates un-salvageable waste from reusable drinking water. This week I created a display so the crew members to monitor the water distiller's functionality. By programming visuals that illustrate the direction the liquids are flowing, visually displaying liquid levels with dynamic images of tanks filling and emptying, indicating the pressure, temperature, and amount of liquid flowing through the system crew members can keep track of the vitality of their distiller system.

Astronaut Clayton Anderson

Tenacity is a key ingredient in becoming an astronaut. One of the things Astronaut Anderson is known for applying to become an astronaut candidate 15 times before being accepted into the program. I was honored to meet Astronaut Anderson at his book signing for "The Ordinary Spaceman" telling his journey as a NASA intern-employee turned astronaut. He has spent 167 days living and working on the ISS. Check out his work: http://astroclay.com/ "Astro Clay" is also very active on Twitter and fun to follow: @Astro_Clay

Space Vehicle Mockup Facility Tour

Although these are referred to as "Mockups" in reality they are exact replicas of the vehicles in space right now so astronauts can accurately simulate missions. My mentor gave us interns a ground tour of the facility. We were able to explore inside the shuttle replica, visit Soyuz spacecraft and look inside the latest Orion mockup where they are currently positioning the displays to the correct eyesight for crew members. Visitiors to Johnson Space Center (JSC) can also tour the Mockup Facility also known as the astronaut training facility. If you are ever in Houston stop by Space Center Houston and you can take a tram tour which takes you around JSC and into a walkway overlooking the mockups: http://spacecenter.org/

Ginger Kerrick

Interns and Co-Ops (Pathways Interns) had the gracious opportunity to attend a lecture by Ginger Kerrick. As a young girl Kerrick dreamed to become an astronaut. From childhood dream to intern to Co-Op to employee to astronaut candidate to astronaut assistant to Capcom to Flight Director to essentially the head of ISS to... *catching breath* - Ginger Kerrick is amazing. Hear her story on Women@NASA: http://women.nasa.gov/ginger-kerrick/

It has been an amazing week with sadly only five more to come. I wish you all could have this experience and I encourage you if you are interested in an aerospace or space related career to intern at NASA: https://intern.nasa.gov/ossi/web/public/main/ All photos were taken by myself or fellow interns of me.