Next Generation Inspired by Next-generation Suborbital Researchers Conference

A decade ago as a senior just before graduating with my bachelor's degree, I attended my first conference. I've been loving conferences ever since. But my absolute favorite is the Next-generation Suborbital Researchers Conference (NSRC). I've been to every NSRC ever held thus far. I'm delighted that the streak continues and I'll be attending this year's NSRC in Broomfield, Colorado from June 2 – 4. I'm so excited I can hardly wait!

NSRC began in 2010 in Boulder, Colorado. I was a graduate student in my second month at a new university pursuing my doctorate in planetary science. My grad advisor, Josh Colwell, was one of the organizers of the conference along with Alan Stern, the man of many hats. Attendance exceeded expectations. Speakers included Lori Garver, Pete Worden, George Nield, Jeff Greason, and Rick Searfoss. SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, XCOR, and Masten were present, among others. Research topics included spectroscopy, solar observations, vulcanoids, suborbital observatories, and regolith dynamics.

Posing with Virgin Galactic's model spaceplane. - NSRC 2010

Being so new to the commercial space industry, I really felt inspired by NSRC. This conference came at an important time for me, right after President Obama's FY2011 budget request and the cancellation of the Constellation program when I felt hopeless about the future of spaceflight. I wrote, “This conference gave me a true sense of belonging among people such as these. I feel like the doors are open to me wider than I realized before. I am very optimistic about my future and the future of the space industry. The dream is still alive!”

I was personally involved in NSRC 2011, hosted by my advisor Josh at my university in Orlando, Florida. I was the volunteer coordinator, recruiting and organizing 40 student volunteers helping to make the conference happen. I was even interviewed by a local news station.

Spreading the love of space on TV - NSRC 2011

This second conference was just as magical as the first. I wrote, “I remember feeling this way during the first NSRC last year in Boulder: energized, passionate, enthusiastic, optimistic, and grateful. All of those feelings came flooding back to me today at the start of NSRC 2011.” Speakers not already mentioned included George Whitesides, Robert Braun, Frank DiBello, David McBride, David Masten, Keith Cowing, and Eric Seedhouse. Even more microgravity research was presented than the year before.

NSRC 2012 was in Palo Alto, California. It was there that I met Neil Armstrong after his talk about suborbital spaceflight history. I am forever grateful that I got to shake his hand before he was gone! XCOR gave away a free Lynx ride to a lucky winner. Speakers not already mentioned included June Scobee Rodgers, Andrew Nelson, William Pomerantz, Carissa Christensen, Rand Simberg, and Jeff Foust. One thing that struck me was the diversity of microgravity research presented compared to previous years. So much science!

Meeting Neil Armstrong, first man on the Moon - NSRC 2012

Prototype future spacesuit helmet - NSRC 2012

NSRC 2013 was back in Colorado, this time Broomfield just outside of Boulder. One of the first things I did upon arriving was climb into a lifesize model of the XCOR Lynx and pretend to fly. I had just started my new job at the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space three months prior and I gave my first public CASIS talk at the conference. Speakers not previously mentioned included Charlie Walker, Mike Lopez-Alegria, Scott Parazynski, Stu Witt, Wayne Hale, Mike Suffredini, Mark Sirangelo, and Jane Poynter.

Flying the XCOR Lynx - NSRC 2013

Where will Alan Stern fly us to in this Lynx ride among the stars? - NSRC 2013

I raced my friend Ryan Kobrick in assembling Lego Lynx models (he won, just barely). I sang Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody with a table full of inebriated professionals. I stayed up really, really late chatting about space with other like-minded dreamers. I wrote, “I really can't believe that all of this is happening to me. NSRC is the best conference ever.”

Legos! - NSRC 2013

And now, NSRC is back after a 3 year hiatus! Originally planned to be an every-18-months conference from 2012 onward, the fifth NSRC was delayed until enough progress in the industry justified the meeting. I'm looking forward to hearing from researchers, flight providers, and everyone else involved! Speakers not previously mentioned include Alan Eustace, Steve Jurczyk, David Miller, John Olson, Jason Reimuller, and Steve Collicott. I'm looking forward to seeing old colleagues and meeting news ones!

And what's sure to convince everyone that I'm crazy, I'll be attending with a baby. This will be a challenge, for sure, but I'm up for it!

For more information, visit http://nsrc.swri.org. 

Imagining A Mission to Jupiter's Ganymede with Planetary Science Summer School

Group shot - PSSS Session 1 - July 2010

The application deadline for the NASA Planetary Science Summer School at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California is approaching, and I realized that I hadn't yet written about my own PSSS experience six years ago. Rereading our paper and looking at photos just now, I remembered that I had met a few of my friends and colleagues through that experience. I present to you:

Ganymede Interior, Surface, and Magnetometer Orbiter, or, GISMO.

Planetary Science Summer School is a one-week bootcamp. Fourteen of us planetary science and engineering graduate students and post-docs gathered for the first session of PSSS in July 2010. We had been emailing back and forth for a month or so, throwing around ideas and getting to know each other. It was through these exchanges that we settled on our mission to Ganymede, Jupiter's largest moon and the only moon known to have its own magnetosphere (magnetic field).

I was assigned the positions of Planetary Protection (protecting other worlds from us) and Education & Public Outreach (EPO). I was tasked with creating our protocols and objectives for protecting Ganymede and nearby worlds such as Europa from contamination and educating the public, especially students.

Protecting the solar system from us humans - July 2010

Additionally, I chose to be on the non-icy surfaces team and the instruments team. On the non-icy surface team, we focused and advocated for studying the interesting surface and subsurface features that Ganymede has to offer, that aren't ice. On the instruments team, we determined which sensors we'd need to carry in order to complete our science objectives. We had to make difficult choices when we didn't have enough money, didn't have enough data bandwidth downlink, didn't have enough power, or was too heavy to carry all that we wanted to fly.

What impressed me the most about the experience was how quickly we were able to design a planetary exploration mission to another world. With the help of experts from JPL's Team X, in just a week, we wrote a mission design paper and an hour-long presentation with technical details and budgets in line with a NASA New Frontiers program mission. The science objectives of the GISMO probe were to study:

• the magnetic field
• the interior
• the surface
• the atmosphere

All for approximately $710 million.

This was my first time at JPL, so I was glad we also got to see the sights. We got a tour of the Mars Exploration Rover mission (Spirit and Opportunity) facilities including rover mock-ups, testbeds, and the controls that give the rovers their schedule. We saw the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity in the clean room before it was launched. It was nice to roam the campus-like grounds, including spending time with the deer. We even saw a show at the Hollywood Bowl, BBC's Planet Earth with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Me with a Mars rover mock-up - July 2010

Mars rover testbed - July 2010

Curiosity on a test run in the JPL cleanroom before its stroll on Mars - July 2010

In addition to our NASA presentation that week, we also presented our paper at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Science Conference, the American Geophysical Union conference, and the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers' Aerospace conference. If there ever is a NASA mission to Ganymede in the future, I hope that the creators of that mission build upon what we started with GISMO.

A Pseudo Geologist Among the Rocks at Barringer Meteor Crater, Arizona

Around 50,000 years ago, a nickle-iron meteorite approximately 50 meters long hit the Earth in what is now Arizona, creating what is known as Meter Crater or the Barringer Crater. Four and a half years ago, I got to explore it. I was one of 16 graduate students who participated in the Lunar and Planetary Institute's Meteor Crater Field Camp in September 2011. It was quite an experience!

On the rim of Meteor Crater - September 2011

I'll start out by admitting that I was not exactly a happy camper during the eight day field camp because I am not a camper at all. I enjoy comfortable beds, temperature controlled rooms, clean bathrooms, vehicles that can take me long distances, and other modern conveniences. To be fair, camping at Meteor Crater isn't fully camping. They had bathroom facilities with decent showers, electrical outlet ports outside, and wifi. I brought my laptop and connected to the internet every morning and evening. Even so, eight days is a long time for a non-camper to camp.

The Meteor Crater camp site - September 2011

I was also quite out-of-place with my peers. Although the program was open to geologists and planetary scientists, it heavily leaned toward geology. I had taken a graduate-level geology class and was studying lunar impact craters, but it was soon clear that I was the least knowledgeable about geology in the pack. Additionally, my fellow classmates seemed to love rocks and their excitement to stare endlessly at rocks was genuine. I think rocks are cool, but my interest in the minutia is short-lived. The program leader quickly identified me as a geologist fraud and took a disliking to me. We didn't see eye-to-eye on space policy, either. Despite my inadequacies, I learned quite a bit of geology from my peers and became the group's photographer with my DSLR.

Group at work - September 2011

Someone else took this one. I'm the short girl in purple - September 2011

The landscapes in the desert are gorgeous and plenty photogenic. We hiked around the crater rim, down to the center and back up again, around the crater ejecta blanket, and in an old quarry. Abandoned mining equipment and infrastructure littered the field like an archaeological site. Recent rains caused wildflowers to burst with color. And my team always seems to be posing in an action shot among the rocks. The sights were truly spectacular.

Wildflowers blooming - September 2011

Abandoned wheel - September 2011

Standing in the ruins with abandoned buildings yonder - September 2011

On the second full day, former astronaut Tom Jones joined us in our hike down the crater. I had met him once before and once since, and he always seems like such a cool guy. Apollo astronauts used to train for the lunar terrain in the crater, and NASA relics are still kept in the crater's museum, so the area has a history of astronaut activity. Tom gave us a presentation on potentially hazardous near Earth asteroids, a relevant subject in an area once hit by a near Earth asteroid.

Posing with astronaut Tom Jones - September 2011

Resting at the bottom of the crater - September 2011

If I wasn't a geologist before I arrived at the field camp, I certainly wasn't going to leave as one. Day after day, we undertook laborious tasks that I can't quite believe modern geologists still do. We counted pebbles by hand. We measured pebbles with rulers. We took location measurements of boulders with outdated handheld GPS receivers. We categorized everything we saw with our own eyes. It seemed to me that aerial remote sensing with good software could have accomplished most of what we did a lot more easily, but graduate students are cheap labor and we were out there for the experience.

Working among the rocks - September 2011

I do appreciate the experience and I'm glad to have participated in the program. Real science was done, and in a small way, I contributed. I'm a co-author on conference proceedings from the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference: Extensional Faulting of the Overturned Coconino Ejecta Layer and Emplacement of Fallback Breccia at Barringer Meteorite Crater (aka Meteor Crater). But honestly, I'm more proud of my photography.

Self-portrait on the cliff - September 2011

Sunset at Meteor Crater - September 2011

Manufacturing Day with Craig Technologies

I'm preoccupied with other things today, but I wanted to quickly recap the fun that was Manufacturing Day on Friday afternoon. I had never attended a Manufacturing Day event before and I'm not directly involved in manufacturing, but it sounded interesting and I wanted to check it out.

A beautiful, windy autumn day in Cape Canaveral outside of the ADMC - Oct. 2, 2015

The event took place at the Craig Technologies' Aerospace and Defense Manufacturing Center in Cape Canaveral. When last I had been to that complex in 2010, it was the United Space Alliance's NASA Shuttle Logistics Depot. USA essentially closed down after the retirement of the space shuttle program, and Craig Technologies took over the facility. I recognized some of the same equipment, though much has been added and improved upon in the last five years.

I would have loved to take more photos of what I saw. However, photography was strictly forbidden inside the facility. They even half-jokingly threatened to confiscate my camera when I asked if I could take a photo of a display booth of manufactured parts that was set up for visitors. I only dared to take photos outside the building, in the lobby, and in the exhibit area.

Our tour guide was the program manager for manufacturing (or a similar impressive title) and was extremely knowledgeable and informative throughout the facilities tour. The tour began in the avionics area where a huge room is set up for cable manufacturing. I wanted to go into the foam wall room where they conduct antenna testing, but our tour group was too big. We were shown a temperature-controlled vibration testing machine quite a bit bigger than the ones I've seen at universities. Although we didn't see the area, we were told about a project testing lighting cycling on the International Space Station.

We were taken to a different area where tubes are created, bent, and assembled. I didn't understand what they meant by “tube bending” until the demonstration. Very similar to how I bend thin strands of metal around circular objects when making or fixing jewelry, an automated machine bends metal pipes around a curved structure quickly and efficiently. In that same area, we were shown a large autoclave for tube creation, a pressure chamber for outgassing, and a laser etching the words “Craig Technologies” into a metal bottle cap opener.

We were then shown a 100,00 class clean room. I smiled when I peered inside the clean room and saw a vacuum chamber bell jar nearly identical to the one I worked with daily for years in graduate school. Only this bell jar had an impressive induction brazing system inside of it.

We were then shown the busiest area: basic manufacturing. I've been trained to use basic machine shop tools: mills, lathes, and drills. I wouldn't have the slightest idea how to use most of the equipment they have: 3, 5, and 9 axis milling machines; coordinate measuring machines; 3D printing machines; water jets, and an electrical discharge machine which I hadn't heard of before. Our tour guide explained that most of the work is manufacturing and reverse manufacturing, not much actual design work here.

The tour ended with snacks, beverages, and an exhibit hall full of manufacturing and technology related organizations. I saw a demonstration of a program identical to the Logo Turtle Graphics that I learned in elementary school, only with Disney's Frozen characters as the cursor courtesy of Code.org. (I personally don't believe that we should "feminize" gender-neutral things by changing their appearance to try to appeal to girls, and instead we should let girls know that gender-neutral things are made for them, but that's just me.) I got to say hello to some colleagues and learn about new things in the area.

The mayor gave a speech, as did Mark and Carol, the President and Founder/CEO, respectively. I've worked with them during Florida Space Day these past few years and have been meaning to learn more about Craig Technologies. Thank you to Craig Technologies and everyone involved for being such great hosts and putting on a great program!

Sneaking a picture with the astronaut-signed space shuttle mock-up in the lobby - Oct. 2, 2015

Advocating for Planetary Science Plutonium in 2012 and Now - Fuel NASA's Discoveries!

At the start of 2012, I was just beginning to develop my love for space policy. I had joined the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences' Federal Relations Subcommittee two years prior, but I had played a background role. I was thrilled when I was selected by AAS to participate in their Communicating with Washington program. My focus: restarting production of plutonium-238 for planetary science missions and addressing the proposed planetary science budget cuts within NASA.

Using a combination of AAS and DPS literature, I pieced together a flyer to give to those I met with in our nation's capital. I thought it a shame that the DPS FRS was dysfunctional at the time and therefore did not provide me with any assistance or advice regarding the advocacy visit, looking back, it may have been a good thing. I was forced to learn on my own how to schedule and prepare for congressional visits and how to interact with legislators and staffers. This experience helped me tremendously with my future Tallahassee visits with Florida Space Day, which I joined in 2013.

The leave-behind flyer I made for my Washington, D.C. visit

Pu-238, a radioactive isotope of the chemical element plutonium, is not a product for or from weapons. It is made from an entirely separate process for a separate purpose, a peaceful purpose of scientific exploration. It is used as the heat source in radioisotope thermoelectric generators which power space missions such as Voyager 1 and 2, Cassini–Huygens to Saturn, New Horizons to Pluto, and the Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity. Pu-238 will also fuel Curiosity's twin, Mars 2020.

However, Pu-238 stockpiles are very low, so low that the scarcity risks future planetary missions. After the United States stopped making Pu-238 in 1988, we had to rely on the Russian supply, which was also running out. In 2012, there was widespread agreement that Pu-238 production should restart in the U.S. but there was disagreement about which government agency should pay for it and how the supply would be allocated.

Playing tourist at the White House - March 2012

Cherry blossom season at the tidal basin - March 2012

My first meeting in Washington, D.C. was with a recent physics PhD who worked in the Office of Management and Budget. He helped to craft the proposed FY2013 NASA budget and thought it firm and decided. He was most interested in budget allocation within NASA: which programs should be funded and which should be cut. He was very interested in my graduate research and my future goals as well.

I then met with two members of the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, Subcommittee on Space & Aeronautics. From the House side, the FY13 budget was very fluid compared to the OMB point of view. Their largest priority from what I could tell was maintaining U.S. leadership in space exploration.

Fun times at the House of Representatives - March 2012

My meetings the following day were Florida-specific. I met with a NASA fellow from Senator Bill Nelson's office on loan from Kennedy Space Center. He was very concerned about the proposed planetary science budget cuts and was curious to learn of their extent. He seemed to want to take immediate action to reverse the negative effects of the budget cuts.

Unfortunately, my very brief meeting with Senator Marco Rubio's office was unproductive and the staffer I met with gave me no indication that he or the senator cared about the issue or about NASA. Whether his stance has changed since launching his presidential campaign, I don't know.

My favorite meeting was with Congressman Bill Posey and his staff. Our meeting was extensive and productive. The congressman is undoubtedly very pro-space. Although my conversation with the congressman was NASA-broad and we didn't delve much into specifics, my post-meeting with a staffer in the hallway was very interesting. It was the first of many interactions I'd have with my congressman and his office.

Meeting Congressman Bill Posey - March 2012

My final meeting was with Congresswoman Sandy Adams' office, whose district at the time included Kennedy Space Center. The staffer who I met with was a recent graduate of my university and was even aware of my specific planetary science lab. The office was very pro-space and assured me that the FY13 budget was being massaged.

Although NASA received a budget cut that year in relation to the president's FY13 request, planetary science did receive a tiny budget bump up from the initial request. Planetary science receive even more of an increase in the following year. Although NASA's budget dropped in 2013, it's been on a slight rise since then, though most expect the numbers to continue to fluctuate.

Pu-238 production was restarted to a small degree in 2013, but not nearly enough. A series of articles have been published in the last few weeks about the need for more for the future of NASA's planetary exploration future. New product is expected to be available in 2019, but not as much as the projected demand. The budgets aren't high enough for faster or increased production.

Future planetary missions that can't rely on solar power may be delayed, descoped, or doomed. Otherwise great science missions may be otherwise stuck in limbo without a fuel source. I can only hope that our current legislators take a long view on the need for the Pu-238 program so that we can continue our very successful planetary science missions well into the future. Bring on more Mars rovers, Pluto probes, and other planetary achievements!

Celebrating past space achievements and working toward future ones at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum - March 2012

Swiss Space Adventures in Washington, D.C.

Proud to represent Swiss Space Systems at the Swiss Embassy in Washington, D.C. on September 16, 2015.

On Wednesday, I was privileged to be a guest at the Embassy of Switzerland in Washington, D.C. with my boss Robert Feierbach as representatives of Swiss Space Systems (S3 USA). The only other time I had been in an embassy was very briefly during my Presidential Classroom program in high school and, to my embarrassment, I can't even remember which embassy it was. I was looking forward to immersing myself in Swiss culture.

Thank you to the Swiss Embassy for welcoming us!

The morning meeting was interesting. It was a small gathering of Swiss-related aerospace companies and aerospace/aviation-related Swiss government officials such as the Swiss department of defense. Aside from my current company being Swiss headquartered, I have no connection to Switzerland and therefore don’t know much about the country and its defenses. Switzerland is a famously neutral country surrounded by European allies; I don’t typically think of the Swiss military at all. I learned quite a bit!

After the mid-morning break, five companies gave short presentations. Swiss technology company RUAG went first, followed by my boss presenting on our company, followed by an American UAV insurance company that works mainly with Swiss clients. Silly me, I didn’t know that Swedish company SAAB doesn’t make cars anymore; mostly they’re into defense-related products now. Finally, Swiss transportation company Panalpina wrapped up the meeting, focusing on their remote shipping services for emergency disaster relief.

Robert presenting S3 to the Swiss representatives at the embassy.

Meeting breakfast spreads in the United States are pretty standard pastries, coffee, and sometimes fruit. The breakfast spread at the Swiss Embassy (legally Swiss soil) had lots and lots of chocolate! Lunch was just as yummy with amazingly delicious chocolate pastries from a local Swiss bakery. My baby gave me the perfect excuse to go back to the table for second and third helpings.

Present was Swiss astronaut Claude Nicollier who flew in space four times. He also has an astrophysics background as I do. He is also the chairman of the expert team for our company. He is astronaut #44 that I've been honored to meet. He talked to me for a few minutes about suborbital spaceflight dynamics and the challenges of human spaceflight.

Robert and me with Swiss/ESA astronaut Claude Nicollier.

We returned later in the day for the evening activities. I had never been to an embassy party before. I had no idea that it would be so extravagant and huge! The embassy was full of Swiss-related space displays, including our own lined up outside along the red carpet leading to the party.

Next to our display out front was a model of the Mars InSight rover which will launch next year. There was a large printout of the Lagoon Nebula as observed by a telescope in Chile for a European Space Agency project. There were mock-ups of Switzerland’s first cubesat, a larger small satellite, and the Rosetta observatory. They had a rotating exoplanet detection model which showed a large planet transversing a star. There was a photo booth with a green screen to display spacy backgrounds.

A huge printout of the Lagoon Nebula greeted us and beckoned the astronomy geek in me to pose.

Posing with the alphorn players and flag waver.

Check out the Mars InSight lander model! Insight will launch in 2016 to study seismology on Mars.

Hello Rosetta! A model of the comet explorer.

Robert and me posing with the photo booth astronaut.

Dinner was well worth the wait. I don’t know what I ate but it was all delicious and I later went back for seconds. Swiss chocolate was aplenty, especially near the Swiss travel and tourism displays. Amongst the crowd of 1,200 people, I ran into astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria who I knew from previous interactions. You never know who you'll meet at a Washington gathering!

Six months of pregnancy has taken its toll on my feet and I discovered the hard way that my pumps no longer fit me as they did. As we exited for the evening, I walked the red carpet barefoot. I'm classy like that. Thank you to the Swiss Embassy and Ambassador for being such gracious hosts and showing us a time to remember!

A Student's Life Changed at NASA Academy MSFC

I was accepted into my first official NASA internship during the summer of 2005 after my junior year of undergrad. There are many amazing internship programs to choose from, but the one that caught my attention was NASA Academy. I loved the combination of research and leadership training. At the time, there were only three NASA Academy programs, and I was thrilled to have been accepted to the one at Marshall Space Flight Center. For ten weeks, 13 students (including 10 females – very unusual!) lived, worked, and played in Huntsville, Alabama, Rocket City USA. I had reached my dream of semi working for NASA! I was thrilled.

I was so excited to work at NASA, I took a screenshot of my listing in the NASA directory. All contact info is long expired.

The majority of my time was spent researching gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) with a MSFC team at the National Space Science and Technology Center (NSSTC) located adjacent to the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Along with the rest of the students, I was also badged to access NASA MSFC located in Redstone Arsenal. We also spent a surprising amount of time traveling to different NASA centers and places of interest. We also had the privilege of privately meeting and hearing talks from several top people in the area. It was a packed summer!

I worked with one other student researching GRBs with our two mentors, Chryssa and Sandy. We analyzed X-ray and gamma-ray data from the Swift space observatory. Perhaps because of my prior research experience, I seemed to pick up on the work quickly and enjoyed teaching my fellow research student. As is typical with short-term internships, there was only so much that we could accomplish in the 10 week program. I ended up returning the following summer to continue my research and obtain my master's degree at UAH working on GRB research. I will write more on this later.

An astrophysicist-in-training at work - NSSFC, Huntsville, AL, June 2005

One of the first special activities we did was weekend adult Space Camp at the US Space & Rocket Center. I had attended Space Camp twice in middle school and twice in high school, so I knew what to expect, but this was an abridged and more advanced version! For our first mission, I served as CAPCOM in mission control. For the second mission, I was an astronaut on an EVA to fix a broken satellite. We used the Aviation Challenge flight simulators to dog fight. We participated in a mock helicopter rescue from a lake. It was so fun!

Spelling out NASA in our flight suits - US Space & Rocket Center, Huntsville, AL, June 2005

Working mission control - US Space & Rocket Center, Huntsville, AL, June 2005

EVA wave - US Space & Rocket Center, Huntsville, AL, June 2005

Next we traveled to Houston to visit Johnson Space Center. We met the JSC director, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, and a few flight directors. We were taken on tours of the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory, the Robonaut lab, the International Space Station training mock-up, the Mission Simulator and Training Facility, the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket lab, the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, and the X-38 high bay. We watched the movie Apollo 13 on the big screen in the Apollo Mission Control room.

Apollo Mission Control Room, JSC, Houston, TX, June 2005

We traveled to Washington, D.C. and Maryland to visit NASA Headquarters and Goddard Space Flight Center. There we attended a series of lectures by professionals including NASA exploration, legislative affairs, international programs, NASA's values, the James Webb Space Telescope, and various science topics. We toured GSFC and visited the National Zoo and some of the Smithsonian museums. We witnessed the Deep Impact collision of the comet Tempel 1 at the University of Maryland where the mission PI was from. We watched Independence Day fireworks at the National Mall.

Smithsonian Air & Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center, Dulles, VA, July 2005

Group shot at NASA Headquarters - Washington, D.C., July 2005

Astronaut Laura - GSFC, Greenbelt, MD, July 2005

Before and after the Deep Impact comet collision - University of Maryland, July 2005

As the resident Floridian, I organized a trip to Kennedy Space Center around the time of the Return to Flight space shuttle launch. We saw Space Shuttle Discovery on the launch pad, got a tour of the SRB Assembly Refurbishment Facility and the historic sites at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, and watched Space Shuttle Atlantis roll into the Vehicle Assembly Building. We met with KSC director Jim Kennedy. We relaxed on the beach. We watched the space shuttle launch from the VIP section of Banana Creek along with several secret service agents protecting First Lady Laura Bush who was watching with Governor Jeb Bush.

Group shot at Pad B with Space Shuttle Discovery - KSC, Florida, July 2005

One of the best launch shots I've ever taken - Discovery Return to Flight STS-114, July 2005

We toured Huntsville locations of interest as well, of course. At MSFC we toured the Propulsion Research Laboratory, the Space Environment and Effects lab where I held a piece of solar sail material, the X-Ray Cryogenic Facility where the James Webb Space Telescope was being worked on, the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance lab, the Robotics Flat Floor facility, the International Space Station Science Control rooms, and the NSSTC where I worked. Outside of MSFC we toured the University of Alabama in Huntsville and the the Von Braun Observatory on top of Monte Sano. We went also ice skating, sky diving, and cave exploring.

I jumped out of a plane and survived! - Cullman, AL, summer 2005

We met with a number of great locals or visiting professionals as well, such as MSFC director David King, astronauts Owen Garriott, Leroy Chiao, and astronaut Tony Antonelli with his T-38. We attended a number of lectures on rocket propulsion, NASA administration, lightning research, environmental control and life support systems, in-situ resource utilization, Chandra X-Ray Observatory, and space weather monitoring.

Checking out the T-38 with astronaut Tony Antonelli - Huntsville, AL, summer 2005

By the middle of the summer, we gave poster presentations of our research for all of MSFC to see. By the end of the summer, we gave short talks on our research. By the end of the summer, I had analyzed six GRBs by modeling their lightcurves and spectra and discovering a few flares. As a group, we created educational documents for the US Space & Rocket Center. I was awarded the Von Braun Leadership Award.

Research presentation - MSFC, Huntsville, AL, August 2005

Group shot in front of the Wernher von Braun bust - MSFC, Huntsville, AL, summer 2005

My NASA Academy experience was one of the best in my life and I'm so grateful to all who were a part of it. I returned to Huntsville the following summer to help staff NASA Academy and continue my research. I also joined the NASA Academy Alumni Association, which unfortunately is currently inactive, but I hope that one of the newer classes will restart it. I still occasionally keep in touch with some of the NASA Academy alumni who I met during those two summers who are still involved in the space industry. My NASA Academy summer had a tremendous influence on my career goals and direction and inspired me to keep moving forward no matter what it took. I highly recommend the program to interested undergraduate and graduate students.