Academics

Internships at NASA

Internships at NASA
The NASA-WV Space Grant Consortium contributed to our student's stipends for these internships..

Emily Kearney's 2017 internship at NASA-IV&V. The NASA Independent Verification and Validation facility is located in Fairmont.

Rocket launch
June 24, 2016 — Angela Meyer and Olivia Rycroft spent a week at NASA Wallops Island. They worked with NASA engineers to install their payload on a Terrier Improved Orion sounding rocket. They watched the launch, retrieved their payload, and analyzed the data.

Cody O'Meara's 2014 internship at NASA-Langley. "My objective was to design and implement a rotating diffuser in the Structural Acoustic Loads and Transmission (SALT) facility. I developed a design, ordered supplies, built the diffuser, and performed a series of tests. The photo shows me standing in the SALT facility's anechoic chamber.

"But this project wasn't the only thing I did this summer. I met two sisters whose parents both work at NASA. They had connections that allowed me to do things I couldn't otherwise have done, such as touring the Wallops Island Flight Facility.

"That wasn't the best part though! Their dad is a NASA pilot, and they talked him into taking us up in a plane and let us fly it a bit!"

Will George's 2014 internship at NASA-Langley. George also worked at NASA in 2013. "I analyzed data from the Multi-Mission Earth Entry Vehicle (MMEEV) test. MMEEVs are blunt-body vehicles designed to transport payloads form space to Earth. We used Langley's 20-ft wind tunnel. George can be seen standing in the wind tunnel in the photo to the right.

"I also participated in a field trip to the Wallops Island Facility and met many interesting people. One of these people generously took me flying in a Cessna-172. He even let me pilot the plane for a while. It was the most exhilarating hour of the whole summer."

Will George and Mark Mattis's 2013 internships at NASA-Langley. The two students studied a discrepancy in the data from the pressure monitors from the heatshield to the Mars Rover Curiosity that landed in August, 2012. Their mentor was Chris Kuhl, who graduated from Wesleyan in 1993. In the photo below, they are presenting their results at a meeting of the Engineering-Physics Club.

Jacob Poldruhi's 2013 internship at NASA-Glenn. "My research supported the Trash-to-Supply-Gas Task. The objective was to find a way to recycle used plastic materials into something useful such as water or fuel to support astronauts as they venture out to explore the Solar System.

"I got to shake hands with astronaut Gregory H. Johnson, who flew on Space Shuffle Flights 123 and 134. I participated in guiding a dropsonde from an airplane to measure conditions in a volcanic plume. We went skydiving and it was amazing! We visited some California aerospace companies, including Scaled Composites (where they build Virgin aircraft and spacecraft), General Atomics (Predator drones), the Boeing C-27 assembly facility, Boeing Phantomworks, Edwards Air Force Base, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Space-X.

"We went to Houston to visit NASA Johnson Space Center. We saw mockups of the International Space Station and a Saturn V rocket. I got to sit in the Apollo Mission Control Flight Director's Chair. And I got to shake hands with Robonaut."

Devon Miller at NASA-Goddard. "I worked at the Lunar and Planetary Academy at Goddard Space Flight Center on the Lunar Dust Mitigation Project. If too much dust enters the astronaut's living areas, breathing becomes difficult. Our solution uses a low-power electron beam in a vacuum with a small electric field that acts as a dust collector.

"We·also·took·a week-long trip to Racetrack Playa in Death Valley, California, to study the phenomena of the roving rocks. The rocks move around on the almost-flat surface of a dried up lake bed. The rocks leave behind trails that are hundreds of feet long. No one has ever witnessed this happening. We took measurements of the moving rocks to form a hypothesis on the mechanisms required for them to move. National Geographic magazine wrote an article on this project, which included this photo of me."

Katie Reid's 2014 internship at NASA-IV&V. "I am working on the Orion spacecraft, which will take astronauts further into space than ever before, past the Moon and possibly even to Mars. In December 2014, the Orion is scheduled to have its first unmanned test flight. Flight data will be sent to NASA-IV&V to be analyzed using Python software."

Corey Rhodes's 2014 internship at NASA-Langley. "My objective was to develop a computer model of a rocket's flight characteristics. I used an Arduino circuit to record data from an accelerometer and an altimeter."

Andrew Tiffin attends Aircraft Readiness Engineering Workshop (2014). "I was one of only 15 students in the entire nation selected for the workshop at North Carolina State University. We flew helicopters in a flight simulator, ran tests on aircraft materials, toured the Cherry Point Marine Corps air station, visited a flight mishap investigation facility, and toured an aircraft operations line to see engineers at work." Andrew's funding came from the NASA-WV Space Grant Consortium."

Josh Hiett's 2014 summer internship at NASA IV&V. Josh's project involved improvements to the user interface to Rover-X, a four-wheeled all-terrain vehicle developed during the summer by the Robotics Capabilities Development Team at the NASA Independent Verification and Validation Center in Fairmont.

Josh also participated in the Rock-Sat-C program. He traveled to the NASA Wallops Island Flight Facility for the launch of a sounding rocket that carried several experiments, including Josh's experiment to measure Earth's magnetic field. On June 26 at 7:21 am, the suborbital two-stage Terrier Improved Orion rocket was successfully launched to an altitude of 120 km.

Internships at NASA

Internships at NASA

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