Sunday, June 2, 2019
By:
Houston…uh, I mean DC…we have lift off! This summer I am thrilled to be the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center research intern! Working at NASA was obviously something I always thought would be awesome, but I never thought I would actually have the opportunity. The past few months my family and friends kept asking me if I was excited for everything to start up and I just kept thinking that there must be a mistake, that none of this is real. Why would someone ever select me, a random kid from lil ol’ New Jersey to come intern at NASA? Well, cat’s out of the bag, it’s real, I’m here, and I’m ready for what lies ahead.
Due to Memorial Day on Monday and orientation on Tuesday, my first real day at Goddard wasn’t until Wednesday. I met my two advisors, Ed and Karwan, and I started learning about what their research team does. With my current understanding of the overall research, I am joining a group that does a mixture of observational cosmology and solid-state physics. In other words, they study how different materials interact with extremely cold temperatures (space temperatures) so they can build microwave and infrared detectors that get put on actual satellites. These satellites then tell us all sorts of things about the history of the universe. It’s pretty cool! Near the end of the week we picked out a project for me to work on, but we are still in the early stages, so I have just been doing a lot of background reading up to this point (tune in next week to find out more details).
Even though I’ve barely started my actual project, I’ve been so excited just learning about everything because the research has so much depth and variety to it. The material I have seen so far combines so many physics and math topics that I learned not so long ago in school in ways I never thought of. For example, partial differential equations and linear algebra are popping up in studies of electromagnetic waves and superconductivity. My physics and math degrees are tying together nicely and it’s just very rewarding to see the immediate pay-off of my college education.
After one week the only downside to everything is that Goddard is FAR from where I am living at George Washington University! Each morning I start by walking a few blocks to the metro station where I take the blue line train to the green line transfer station. On the green line, I ride north to the last stop in Greenbelt, MD. Lastly, I take a metrobus from the Greenbelt station to the Goddard Visitor Center. From there I am just a short walk to my building, but coming in at about 1 hour and 20 minutes each way, the commute is rough. It’s definitely something that will take time adjusting to, but it’s a good real-world experience. I also can’t complain too much because I do it all each day so I can work at NASA. Knowing that makes it all worth it.
In summary, the stage has been set and the experience has officially begun. It’s all going better than I could have ever imagined and I’m excited to see how everything plays out. From the incredible people around me to the work I’ll be doing every day, I know this summer is going to be a good one. Each day I look forward to the next and my only hope is that it all doesn’t go by too fast. Until next week, Terry Schuh signing off.
Terance Schuh