Thursday, February 9, 2012

NASA Internships: Hardware vs. Data Crunching

The setting June 27th of 2011, hot outside and I hide inside during the afternoon killer heat. I open my email to confirm my travel plans with my friend on the East Coast. Feeling pretty low after all the rejection letters I got from NASA I almost did not open that email. But I clicked it and boy I am glad I did!

Part of Something Special

Blocked by the guy in red!
I got the NASA Motivating Undergraduates in Science and Technology (MUST) Scholar award that summer. I traveled to the other side of the US for the first time in my life. Part of that package is I receive an internship with NASA this summer at one of their ten centers. I have now come to my dilemma of this story: Hardware or Data Crunching. 


I know that I will be doing my internship at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland but there seem to be two flavors of Astro Internship. Right now I am in favor of working on the International X-Ray Observatory Mirror Technology Development. It is NASA's next major X-ray space telescope, will explore the universe to develop a better understanding of black holes, galaxy clusters, and the evolution of matter and energy. (Next blog post will have more details) This is something that I cannot already do in the lab at UCR. Then there is the Wide-field Imaging Interferometry Testbed (WIIT) that is an operating optical interferometer which is being used to develop and explore the practical limitations of techniques for imaging complex scenes at high angular and moderately high spectral resolution. 


Both would be great and add to my experience but what would you choose?



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4 comments:

  1. BrianFebruary 12, 2012 at 10:42 AM

    Those are both pretty cool technologies. Whatever your decision, just know that it won't be a problem at all to switch gears and do something completely different in grad school.

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  2. Samantha RorickFebruary 14, 2012 at 10:36 AM

    I am looking for the one that will give me the best experience with something I cannot work on at UCR. Right now I am still undecided if I want to do grad school for Astro or Education.

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  3. The Mad PhysiMarch 5, 2012 at 7:41 PM

    Awesome!!!!! I bet you're stoked! I typically like the physical hands-on type of experience, especially since I like understanding how things work. On the other hand, data analysis isn't easy. It takes time to understand how to read data. But like you said, you can't get the hands-on hardware experience at UCR, so I'd go with that. :)

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  4. Samantha RorickMarch 6, 2012 at 8:55 AM

    Yeah I am keeping my fingers crossed for IXO!

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