First Week Updates

My first week at NASA is complete! It has been a whirlwind, and there has been a serious learning curve and adjustment to living on my own. Luckily I have made friends with some really cool people, both from Smith and other colleges around the country. Some of the other interns staying at the Lodge with us are from Iowa State, University of Nebraska Lincoln, Idaho State, and many more! Also shout-out to my fantastic roommate, who has been very supportive, kind, accepting, and is great cook!

All throughout the week, I continued working on the product & project that my intern group has been working on since my start here. We wrap up this part of the project tomorrow (Monday), and after that we'll move on to different assignments and tasks. I am excited to see what is in store.

A few interns in our group went to a really cool seminar this past Thursday. There were two lectures; the first was entitled "Life Support Systems – Air Revitalization at Ames," and it was about how air is circulated in the ISS (International Space Station). It is important that the astronauts have enough oxygen and not too much carbon dioxide while they are working on ISS. The second lecture was called "In-space Biomanufacturing for Long Duration Missions." It was about how bio-plastics and bioengineered materials can be utilized during space missions, and possibly on Mars. It was super cool to hear full-time NASA Ames scientists speak about different fields that I would not necessarily be involved in.

We discovered a Titan rocket on campus on the way to the seminar on Thursday! This rocket was used to study buffeting of launch vehicles during atmospheric ascent.

This weekend was also really fun! I met up with one of my friends from Smith, Maddy, in Palo Alto. We went to lunch at the Palo Alto Creamery, which was a cute little diner on one of the Palo Alto street corners. Then we went for a walk around the Stanford University campus. We visited in the Arizona Cactus Garden in the Stanford arboretum.

I posed with a cactus in the Stanford Arboretum!

After we finished hanging out in Palo Alto, I went back to San Francisco with Maddy to stay the night at her house. We went to see her brother perform in a show for his school, and then I went out to dinner with her and her family at a restaurant called Burgermeister. All in all it was quite lovely! She has an amazing view of the city from her house.

The view of San Francisco from Maddy's window!

I returned to NASA Ames this afternoon, and I've mostly been laying low and escaping the heat since then.

I am looking forward to a group presentation tomorrow, where we present our work thus far to our supervisor! I hope that she is impressed with the work that we've done.

I am also looking forward to more fun adventures to come around the Bay Area!