NASA Goddard Hosts Summer Internships for About 500 U.S. Students

GREENBELT, Md., June 3, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- About 500 students from around the U.S. have been granted the opportunity to intern this summer at the four campuses connected with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. During their time at NASA, the student interns will learn and apply research protocols and processes related to Earth- and space-systems science, computer science, engineering and technology.

Interns will be located at the main Goddard campus in Greenbelt, Maryland; the Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) Facility in Fairmont, West Virginia; the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, New York; and NASA's Wallops Flight Facility at Wallops Island, Virginia. At each of these locations they will work with some of the nation's leading scientists and engineers.

These life-changing internships turn into "out-of-this-world" experiences as the students participate for six to ten weeks, doing hands-on research or engineering alongside NASA experts. The center's internship opportunities are designed to provide high school, undergraduate and graduate students with experiences that motivate and prepare them for careers aligned with Goddard and its industry and university partners.

Each selected intern was placed with a NASA mentor and provided with scientific or engineering research opportunities that matched the student's educational interests and background. Their assigned work may include equipment design and testing, experimental data collection and processing, computer software development or fieldwork. Many projects are at the cutting edge of science and technology, and all are important to future NASA research efforts.

Young men and women from U.S. states such as Alabama, Illinois, Minnesota, New Mexico, and the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico are involved in this year's program.

Some of the interns will be working on missions that include: the Neutron star Interior Composition ExploreR (NICER), the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission, the James Webb Space Telescope, the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) and the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite – R Series (GOES-R).

NICER is an approved NASA Explorer Mission of Opportunity dedicated to the study of the extraordinary gravitational, electromagnetic and nuclear-physics environments embodied by neutron stars.

The MMS mission is a Solar Terrestrial Probes mission comprising four identically instrumented spacecraft that will use Earth's magnetosphere as a laboratory to study the microphysics of three fundamental plasma processes: magnetic reconnection, energetic particle acceleration and turbulence.

The James Webb Space Telescope is a large space telescope, optimized for infrared wavelengths. It is scheduled for launch later in this decade. It will study every phase in the history of our Universe, ranging from the first luminous glows after the Big Bang, to the formation of solar systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth, to the evolution of our own Solar System.

Both JPSS and the GOES-R program are collaborative development and acquisition efforts between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA. The JPSS is the next generation polar-orbiting operational environmental satellite system that represents significant technological and scientific advances in environmental monitoring and will help advance weather, climate, environmental and oceanographic science. GOES-R is the next generation of geostationary Earth-observing systems monitoring Earth and space weather.

Members of the news media interested in learning about an intern from their state or local area should contact Mablelene Burrell in the NASA Education Office at [email protected] or 301-286-1122.

For more information about NASA Goddard's Internship Program, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/education/internships.html

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SOURCE NASA