Sunday, July 20, 2014
By:
As my project is nearing its conclusion, corners are being straightened, wrinkles ironed out. Tuesday night, the interns gathered at the Aviation Museum in College Park for a dinner with our mentors and sponsors, including Dr. Mather and his wife, with whom I spoke for a very long time about her dancing career and what exactly it's like to win a Nobel Prize, in terms of the number of formal gowns you need.
A major task I undertook this week was helping plan the tour at NASA for the other SPS interns. Nick and I revised schedules, arranged meetings, and coordinated staff and interns. Overall, I think it turned out well. Thursday morning, we were at NASA early to get some lab tours in before heading to the Science Jamboree, an expo of all the work being done at Goddard. The tables ranged from the flashy space telescopes to climate science and geology to cataloging all derivative technologies. We ate lunch with Dr. Mather, peeked in the flight control center for the Hubble Space Telescope, and went on a tour of the TV and animation studios. Dr. Gull took us around the massive clean room facilities and various payload testing equipment, like the sonic chamber and the centrifuge.
As the week started winding down, I started working on my final presentation for AIP.
Kirsten Randle