Internship Management System

Flight Project Admin Support

• (Business - Management/Administration)
• (Business - Economics)

To assist the Flight Project's Assistant Director with numerous logistics tasks as the Flight Projects Directorate is getting ready to break ground on its new building.  Student required to have a basic understanding of word and excel and be willing to move around our current facilities to compile Directorate housing issue data.

Goddard Engineering Summer Intern Project

• (Engineering)
• (Engineering - Aerospace-Flight Dynamics)

Project Description
Seeking up to two high school students to join a team of 3-4 college to graduate students to work on formulating a feasible mission concept and create a baseline design for an Active Debris Removal (ADR) Mission.

Orbital debris, or space junk, is a threat to satellites, astronauts, space station, and other space assets. Through ground tracking, trajectory planning, and debris avoidance maneuver, spacecraft can avoid conjunction. However, maneuvering is impractical and sometimes impossible for spacecraft in more densely populated orbits. The objective of an ADR Mission is to design a spacecraft that will actively remove space debris by rendezvous & capture and deorbit. The deorbit phase can be achieved by several methods such as: drag enhancement devices, electrodynamics tethers, propulsive tugs, Ion Beam Shepherding, space collector... or others.

The project will work similar to an undergraduate senior design project, where sub-teams would form and students would take ownership of aspects of the mission per their background and preferences. Students will be given top-level mission objectives and requirement, and are expected to seek creative solution of their own. The group will have a lead mentor and a team of co-mentors from MESA, whom they can consult and seek guidance.

This is NASA Goddard Engineering organization, Applied Engineering & Technology Directorate, or AETD's first of many future Summer Intern Projects. This year's pilot will be hosted by Mission Engineering & Systems Analysis (MESA) Division, home of Guidance, Navigation, and Control Branch, Attitude Control Branch, Navigation and Mission Design Branch, Propulsion Branch, Components Hardware Branch, and System Engineering Branch. In order to create a balanced team students **must** indicate their preference(s)/interest(s) between Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GN&C), Attitude Control, Flight Dynamics & Mission Design, Space Propulsion, Robotics, and/or Hardware in their student statement.

Greenland Ice Sheet Lake Evolution

• (Earth Science - Cryospheric Science)

New NASA Operation IceBridge data shows that summer lakes, that form on the surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet become buried and water persists throughout the winter.  Little is known about why some lake on the ice sheet drain and others do not.  Much is to be discovered by studying the life cycle of these lakes.

For this project a student will monitor the evolution of select lakes that form on the surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet during the summer.  They will track, using visible satellite imagery, when lakes form, drain or freeze over and if the lakes life cycle changes from one year to the next.

GSFC Integrated Design Center (IDC) Mission Design Lab (MDL) H.S. Intern

• (Engineering - Systems Engineering-Space Flight Hardware & Software)
• (Computer & Information Sciences - Information Systems-Data Retrieval and Mining SW)

During study weeks, the MDL H.S. intern will participate in the space flight mission study activities with the objective to learn the important characteristics involved in mission design, development and test, and operations. In-between studies, the MDL intern will use this knowledge to continue the work of previous H.S. interns in the development of an IDC/MDL mission information database. Identification of important mission characteristics and development of a method of comparing these characteristics between studies is an important objective for the IDC.

The GSFC Integrated Design Center (IDC) is a unique facility that brings scientists, engineers and managers together to conduct rapid space flight instrument and mission conceptual design studies. Studies are typically one week long and are conducted in a dedicated lab that contains the equipment (workstations) and tools (software) needed by the different disciplines to allow rapid design of the concept.

Concepts include Earth science, Space science, Planetary, Comet/Asteroid, Solar and human-crewed missions. The successful candidate will become involved with these study activities in the Mission Design Lab (MDL).

Guidance, Navigation and Control Branch High School Intern will learn and aid in the analysis of rocket related engineering. (Wallops Flight Facility)

• (Engineering - Aerospace-Flight Dynamics)
• (Engineering - Balloons & Sounding Rockets)

The intern will work closely with a senior aerospace engineer to develop and apply engineering tools for the analysis of rocket technology development.  The student will use math and physics skills and will have the opportunity to expand their understanding and to be involved in the practical application of these skills. Location will be on site at Wallops Flight Facility.

Innovation Lab Engineering Technician Assistant

• (Engineering)
• (Engineering - Mechanical-Design)

Selected candidates will work in small teams in a dynamic environment that will cover all aspects of manufacturing support for a micro project. Disciplines that will be introduced will include but not be limited to compute aided design (CAD), computer aided machining (CAM), laser marking, rapid prototype production (RP) in 3 D printers, hands on machining operations, and the integration of hardware produced by their team or others into a higher level assembly. Additional duties may include operation of video cameras, editing of content into presentations for demonstrations, and development of power point presentations.

Miniaturized laser heterodyne radiometer for trace gas measurements

• (Earth Science - Atmospheric Chemistry)
• (Engineering - Detectors and Sensors-Passive)

In this internship, students will participate in the field testing of a new instrument for measuring methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This will include both indoor and outdoor work. Duties include monitoring equipment, collecting and analyzing data, and recording project work in a lab notebook with neat handwriting.  Position requirements follow:

 Position 1 requirements:
- Completion of two or more high school level science courses (such as Chemistry, Physics, Earth Science, Biology). 
- Completion of two or more high school level math courses (such as Algebra 1, Algebra 2, Geometry, Trigonometry, Calculus). 
- Good communication skills (The intern should be able to learn technical material, speak clearly, and write in complete sentences).
- Programming experience in Labview
 
Position 2 requirements: 
- Completion of two or more high school level science courses (such as Chemistry, Physics, Earth Science, Biology). 
- Completion of two or more high school level math courses (such as Algebra 1, Algebra 2, Geometry, Trigonometry, Calculus). 
- Good communication skills (The intern should be able to learn technical material, speak clearly, and write in complete sentences).
- Mechanical ability (The intern should have a working knowledge of basic hand and power tools).

Mission Planning Lab at Wallops Flight Facility

• (Computer & Information Sciences - Computer Science-Modeling and Simulation)
• (Computer & Information Sciences - Computer Science-Real-time Systems)

The Mission Planning Lab (MPL) provides a collaborative visualization and analysis tool that allows realistic simulation, presentation and evaluation of platform selection, flight profiles, and range asset placement.

By integrating detailed information on vehicle capabilities, range capabilities, and mission specific objectives, MPL meets several critical current needs for the Wallops Research Range.

A pre and post-flight mission tool, MPL visualizes, analyzes, and optimized mission specifications based on vehicle characteristics, range setup, and performance to support missions and assess alternatives with: Visibility, Feasibility, Variability and Certainty.

MPL website: http://sites.wff.nasa.gov/mpl/

Modeling of Occultation Mask for Exoplanet Missions

• (Engineering - Optics)
• (Space Science (Astronomy) - Astrophysics-Exoplanets and Debris Disks)

The field of Physical Optics deals with light in terms of waves and how they produce interference, diffraction, polarization, and other phenomena for which geometrical optics ignores. Many NASA astrophysics missions including exoplanet mission use occultation masks to block the light from the central star and identify the orbiting planet. The design and development of these masks employ Physical Optics to suppress the central star light. The chosen intern for this project will learn the basics of Physical Optics and modeling of the light propagation through free-space. He/She will use the Matlab to model occultation mask of NASA missions.

Ocean Radiometer for Carbon Assessment instrument and component optical testing

• (Engineering)
• (Instrument Science)

The student intern will join an engineering team to assist with instrument and component level optical testing of the Ocean Radiometer for Carbon Assessment engineering development unit.  This instrument is currently being developed to support future earth science data collection.  The prototype unit will be undergoing testing this summer consisting of spectral, polarization, and stray light characterization.  Both the instrument as a whole and individual optical components are expected to undergo various tests this summer.

The student will work under the supervision of a mentor.  Work will require hands on participation in an optical laboratory.  This will involve learning the operation and use of commercial and custom measuring instruments such as spectrometers, radiometers, and polarimeters under the supervision of a mentor.  Participation in system level tests will be as part of a larger team of 5 - 6 optical engineers.