Nicole Leung, 2022 NASA Goddard Space Center Intern

Biography

SPS Chapter: Wellesley College

Hi! My name is Nicole Leung (she/her). I am a graduating senior at Wellesley College in Wellesley, MA receiving my BA in Physics and Mathematics. During COVID year and beyond, I worked with a statistical physics research group at Boston University. The group studies critical behavior in phenomena such as earthquakes, neural avalanches, and economic asset exchange. My work with the group sparked my interest in computational physics, data analysis, and simulation. I am super excited to spend this summer working on the Experiment for Cryogenic Large-aperture Intensity Mapping (EXCLAIM) project as one of the NASA Goddard Research Interns. Outside of academics, I enjoy playing jazz piano, ultimate frisbee, and video games, and I can bake a mean loaf of bread.

Internship

Host: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Project

Abstract

EXCLAIM is a cryogenic balloon-borne far infrared telescope mission that will develop a three-dimensional intensity map of carbon monoxide and carbon ion emission in the early universe. The star camera is a key component of the EXCLAIM attitude determination control system. An iDS UI-5480CP industrial camera is used in conjunction with a Birger Canon EF Lens Controller to collect star field images. Horizon coordinate values are estimated from the star fields with astrometry to provide a fine pointing solution for the telescope and calibrate the gondola magnetometer. EXCLAIM is entering its build phase, and instruments such as the star camera are being prototyped. In this talk, I will walk through the process of developint interfaces between the star camera and the flight control computer, as well as design of the new star camera mount system.

Final Presentation

Internship Blog

Week 1: Getting Settled

It’s week 1! Every day has something new to offer. On Monday, I learned that the White House is next to a whole assortment of monuments and museums, which are all within walking distance of the dorms. The interns and I watched the Memorial Day parade before heading back to the dorms for an early night. I was glad that my roommate Taylor Overcast got to the unit before me; it is spacious and comfortable, but at night time it is scary to be in there alone.

On Tuesday, we went to orientation to learn more about the SPS Internship Program and met our individual mentors for the first time. My mentor, Eric Switzer, introduced me to EXCLAIM and its purpose. We are developing technology at least 10 years ahead of a potential space mission, which blew my mind. In my head, I knew that some technologies are developed specifically for space missions, but I did not realize how far in advance they needed to be finished. I had also never heard of scientific balloons - I thought that hot air balloons (which is what our balloon looks like) only existed in cartoons. I have a lot to learn about experimental research and the aerospace industry. I am equally thrilled and terrified to be working with NASA this summer - thrilled to meet people and contribute to an exciting project, and terrified of breaking their multi-million dollar apparatus! I will receive my NASA badge next week, so I have not yet seen the Goddard Space Flight Center (or had the chance to break anything). I am not completely sure which parts of my project are confidential. Hopefully in future blog posts I will be able to talk about my project in more detail!

I worked from home on Wednesday, and I worked from the AIP office on Thursday and Friday. In those three days, Eric and I called again, this time to flesh out the details of my project for this summer. I also met the Lead Mechanical Engineer, Tatsat Parekh, and the Lead Spectrometer Designer, Emily Barrentine, who respectively walked me through mechanical and electrical components of the apparatus that we will be working with this summer. They recommended visiting the NASA food truck fleet at lunch time!

Dorm life feels like the beginning of college again. Everyone in the program is really cool and it seems like people want to spend time together this summer, which I am glad about. On Tuesday we played Telestrations, which is like telephone but with pictures. Some of us are incredible artists, and at the end of the night, we decided to play with our non-dominant hand to even out the playing field. We are trying to organize a bowling trip next week, and I want to visit the spy museum this summer. I am super excited to be with these people and hear about their internship experiences, and to be in this incredible city.

Week 2: IT Security, Spongebob, and the Nobel Prize

On Sunday, I prepared for the week ahead. I did laundry, cooked this week’s food, and cleaned the house. I made about 140 dumplings and I have 50 skins left! My roommate Taylor Overcast and I talked about hosting a tea party in our room. If we do this, I’ll use them to make savory tea snacks!

For work, I completed my onboarding forms and project plan with Eric. Some background on the project: EXCLAIM is a balloon-borne mission that uses a special telescope system to learn more about the formation of stars and galaxies after the Big Bang. I will work with two parts of this telescope, namely the star camera system and the spectrometer. The star camera system helps the telescope orient itself in the night sky, in conjunction with other sensors on the balloon gondola. I will help to prototype and test its parts, and develop flight control software for integration with the rest of the telescope. Spectrometers tell us what wavelengths are contained in a beam of light. The last generation of the EXCLAIM spectrometer was the size of a big dog. The current generation is small enough to hold in your hand! As a secondary project, I will design testing packages for the smaller spectrometer.

I started learning about python packages that will control the star camera, and astronomy imaging software to analyze telescope images. I also started learning Solidworks, which is what the team uses to design telescope parts. I read two papers, talked to vendors about parts to power the star camera, and went to group meetings on engineering and EXCLAIM sciences. My work computer and authorization to be on campus (on Goddard’s end) should come through sometime next week. In the meantime, I went to virtual orientation sessions, completed my IT security training, and got my NASA badge! The badge is super intense, it is scan-proof and comes with a hard plastic case. The badging officer took three (!) scans of my fingerprints and sent them to the FBI. I am officially ‘in the system,’ so to speak. It took a whopping 8 hours to get through the mandatory security training modules. It would have taken longer if I listened to the audio instead of reading transcripts! The training was comprehensive, and I certainly learned a lot about how to improve my own digital security.

Outside of work, the interns were really busy! To be honest, I feel a little burnt out after this week. It was great to spend so much time with people and have more activities at work, but next week I would like to find more balance between work, play, and rest. Even so, I had a fantastic time at all of the events we went to! Some highlights include our second game night, where we played Jackbox games on the computer, and a card game called Exploding Kittens. There are a lot of musicians here - if we have the time (and if I can find a piano), I’d love to form a combo with the other jazz musicians. Also, Valeria Viteri-Pflucker (flute) shared a trio arrangement called Master’s Flute with me (piano) and Taylor Colaizzi (clarinet). We spent one evening looking for a piano to try it out. We couldn’t find one after walking around for two hours, so we went back to Valeria’s room to sing and play guitar/ukelele together. My favorite song that we sang was the Spongebob Squarepants ‘Ripped Pants’ song :)

On Thursday, John Mather visited AIP to talk to the interns! I thought he would present his Nobel Prize work, but he was there specifically to talk to us. He was so kind, and had a lot of good advice for everyone. He also entertained all sorts of questions, like whether aliens are real, and his thoughts on the baby asteroid that hit the James Webb Telescope. I hope I’ll see him again, especially because the James Webb Telescope came from the same department as EXCLAIM! After work on Friday, the whole internship cohort (and many members of AIP) watched a Nationals game together. A lot of Nationals fan merch confused me because the Nationals logo looks just like the Walgreens logo and the W in Wegmans. Afterwards, we visited a pride event at a bar and watched a midnight showing of Rocky Horror! One of my high school friends is visiting DC with her college friends, and we went to the pride parade together on Saturday. Also, it turns out that some of my college friends live in the same building as the interns! I hope we can all hang out later this summer.

I have no idea how to end this so here’s a meme:

Week 3: solve your star field in SECONDS with this cool trick!!! computers hATE HER!!!!

Once again, I made food for the week on Sunday. I used my leftover ingredients from last week to make pasta, as well as a stir fry with meat, tofu, and mixed vegetables to go over rice. I also got a pesto sauce and an eggplant-garlic-red pepper sauce to add to my sandwiches at work. I found a couple of good running routes. My favorite so far is a route that goes pastthe wharf restaurants, under a bridge, and connects to a bike path with lots of forest cover. It’s also possible to run to the Pentagon - look out for photos next week!. I haven’t gone city running in a while and I am equally pleased and surprised that my shins don’t hurt from the pavement yet.

I met up with my high school friend’s college friend, Kate, on Monday. We went to Casta’s Rum Bar near GWU and walked around DC at night. We also visited the spy museum and visited the wharf on Sunday. On Saturday I saw one of my college friends, Emma, for Japanese food and bubble tea. Emma has a Nintendo switch, and I’m thinking of buying one for myself so we can play games together.

On Friday, the interns visited Tonic at Quigley’s for tater tots, and then we went to Decades, which is a club where each floor has food and music from that decade. We danced for a couple of hours before walking home! We also saw the NOI-F Orchestra perform on Saturday. My favorite piece was the Funeral March for Queen Mary. I liked it because musically, it felt the most grounded - it was in 4/4, while some other pieces were in odd meter or had an ambiguous tempo. The main theme was simple and very eerie. I jumped every time I heard the bass drum - probably because it was behind the conductor, JoAnn Falletta and I couldn’t see it!

For work, I mainly worked with star field imaging software called astrometry.net. Astrometry takes at pictures of the sky, looks for light sources, and matches them to celestial bodies in its database. It tells us where the camera was pointing when the photo was taken. You can upload pictures on the website, or you can download the software (and database) and run it externally, which is what we’ll do for EXCLAIM. Unfortunately, it doesn’t run yet! I’ve been trying to use astrometry through the command line, but my computer can’t find the files where star information is stored. Eric sent me some code from the PIPER mission, which is an older balloon-led mission that featured a lot of similar hardware and software. In particular, it used astrometry in a similar way to us, because it is completely automated and accesses astrometry software through python instead of through a command line interface. I converted the program to python 3 and had to download a LOT of python packages before it would compile. I’ve spent the whole week troubleshooting this problem. Hopefully next week I can get it to work. I will also need to document the installation/run process, as well a sthe structure of the PIPER code, and present it at the next EXCLAIM collaboration meeting. On a happier note, my work computer finally arrived! I was able to pick it up on Thursday and got it fully set up on Friday at the MLK library, which I visited with Matangi. Up til now I have been working on my personal computer. Eric and I are still waiting on authorization for me to go to GSFC. I hope it will go through in time for me to go to the NASA intern pizza picnic this coming Wednesday.

Tomorrow (Monday), some interns are planning to go to the beach and go bowling. I can’t wait to see what the rest of the week will bring!

Note on 6/19: My phone is being very finnicky so I will return to this post tomorrow and add photos from this week. In the meantime, here is a meme:

Week 4: Goddard, Frisbee, Scones, and Outreach

This week, I finally got to see the Goddard Space Flight Center campus! There was an intern picnic event on Wednesday, and I got one day visitor access to participate. In theory, Goddard is 30 minutes away from ACP. But the bus from the metro station to NASA’s front gate only leaves once an hour - so it actually took a full hour to get there. It was totally worth it though - Goddard looks like a college campus on steroids. There are 30 odd buildings, including a health and fitness center, a police building, a library, and a gift shop, in addition to the many lab/office buildings. The campus is so large that most people drive or bike everywhere. Eric met me at the gate, and we drove to the picnic pavilion for pizza. Then he gave me a tour of the high bay and mechanical lab, where many parts for EXCLAIM’s gondola are stored. I also saw our lead mechanical engineer Tatsat in person. We drove to Eric’s office in the astronomy building, and he showed me the star camera that I will be working with! Eric then introduced me to Jim, who is in charge of the flight control computer and some cryogenic containers that will house the telescope. At some point I’ll work with Jim to make the star camera talk to the computer. I worked in Eric’s office for the rest of the day before going home.

I went to ACP to work most other days. Astrometry.net software is FINALLY working on my computer, but only through the command line. Now I need to make it to work as a python program that can be uploaded to telescope hardware. Tomorrow, I will present some slides to the EXCLAIM collaboration about astrometry.net’s code structure, and the specific configuration of astrometry options that the star camera will use. On Thursday, I called the IT desk so they could install some software that was missing from my computer. We aren’t allowed to install software on work computers by ourselves, we need the IT desk to remote control our computers and install it for us. Now I am almost completely set up for work! Once I am authorized to be at NASA, I’ll be able to work much more quickly.

On Friday I had a check-in meeting with Kayla. She gave me advice on how to build and use my network. It was really nice to talk to her, and to get this advice - I am actively looking for a job to start in the fall, and I feel more confident about how to navigate the job search process with my connections now.

Outside of work, I hung out with Taylor O on Juneteenth Monday. She and I both play frisbee with our college teams, so we brought a disc to the national mall and threw it around for an hour. It turns out that NASA has its own frisbee group. If Taylor and I are both free one evening, we might be able to join them. I also helped Matangi make chocolate chip scones - I took a couple home to bake by myself and they are absolutely delicious! The interns are having a potluck this coming Tuesday - Matangi and Lucy will probably bring the rest of the scones, and Taylor and I are either making a berry cobbler or a quiche.

On Saturday, the interns showcased physics demos at the Astronomy on the Mall outreach event. My demos were “Cloud in a Bottle” and “Electromagnet!” They were both really cool and I was surprised at how many people 1. came to this event, and 2. showed genuine interest in the demos. The people who were most curious were little kids! Some of them knew so much physics already that they could explain my demo for me. I’m glad that so many people are interested in physics and astronomy, and I hope we inspired even more people to learn about the sciences.

Week 5: halfway through!

I’m authorized to work at NASA for the rest of the summer! On Monday, I got a call from NASA internship coordinator, Sarah Alspaw, who asked me to confirm some things before I could go in. The next day, I met Eric at NASA for a more in-depth tour of the buildings that I’d be working in. He showed me my office (down the hall from his), and I worked there for the rest of the day. Working on site has helped me get a lot more done. Some highlights from this week include getting astrometry.net to work as a python program, using a jupyter notebook and a remote SSH to tunnel into the flight computer, and presenting my work with astrometry.net to the EXCLAIM collaboration. Next week I’m going to start developing a jupyter notebook interface for the star camera through the ssh tunnel, remove the redis dependency in the python astrometry program, and design the star camera mount. I’m looking forward to work next week - my daily commute time is now 3.5 hours, so I can start working through my long list of tv shows to watch.

Outside of work, I’ve gotten to play frisbee with the group at NASA and with Taylor O’s friends! The NASA group plays on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I only played on Thursday but they were amazing. Usually when I play co-ed pickup, it is mostly men and they don’t throw to me. But this group threw to me as much as the other players and I scored a lot! Taylor’s group was similar. We played on Saturday morning with a larger group in Virginia, and they included us in the game just as much as everyone else. I’m hoping to play with both groups again next week.

I saw my cousin Alex, who recently graduated from college and moved to DC two weeks after I got here. We got dinner at a ramen house called Daikaya the Izakaya in Chinatown, and it was so good that I went back on Friday with my college friend Emma. We also tried the soft-serve ice cream from a shop across the street called Little Sesame. They had two flavors: vanilla-tahini and chocolate-coffee, with a choice of cacao nibs, crumbled sesame cookies, and pistachio bits for toppings.

The interns also started playing Dungeons and Dragons. Our first session was on Thursday evening, and Taylor C was our dungeon master! I have never played before but it was a lot of fun. Taylor C, Justin, Ben, and Valeria seem to have played before. During our session, we killed two t-rex dudes who attacked our tavern (and destroyed the tavern in the fight). Justin convinced a shopkeeper to sell his carriage to us, and he became very very good friends with the innkeeper and stayed in a private room in the inn ;) the rest of us slept in our bedrolls outside. Next time we will visit the city and fly to another planet on the Sky Bus.

Week 6: bread

I made a lot of progress at work this week. I managed to install software for the star camera and its controlling interface onto the flight computer with the EXCLAIM flight computer lead, Jim. I also made a resource documenting all software installs for the flight computer - it’s a work in progress but the group will need it since we will have to install all the software on another system at some point. Eric and I figured out the pinout of the camera and did some soldering to connect it to its power supply. I also finished the prototype image processing program and removed its Redis dependency (Redis is a message bus that lets the balloon instruments talk to each other). We can start using it once we are able to collect images on the star camera. Eric and I also found a lens holder for the star camera that has more fasteners than the old one. We will need to design around it, but it will be more secure than the old one. Next week, I will need to remove the OpenCV dependency (another python package) in the star camera operation software and come up with a design to attach the star camera to a metal plate on the mount.

I am applying for jobs, the new hiring season has just started. I had an interview with a PCB (printed circuit board) company in Massachusetts on Thursday and I think it went ok! They had me play Flow Free and Tangrams to prepare for my interview, during which someone demonstrated the process of designing printed circuit boards. I’m happy to report that PCB design is indeed quite similar to both of those games!

At home, I watched the 4th of July fireworks with my cousin. He recently moved to DC and will start working on the hill this coming week. He also came to Quigley’s for tater tots and happy hour with the interns on Friday, and he joined us for a potluck on Sunday! He brought clementines and I brought quiche again. Also in attendance were some friends from Wellesley who live on the floor below the SPS interns (they brought ice cream!). I also saw my college friend Emma in Bethesda, we visited the community pool and got lunch at the only restaurant in Bethesda that she hasn’t visited yet: Tacombi (Bethesda). I DND with the interns on Tuesday and played frisbee at NASA on Thursday. Taylor O, Lucy, Matangi, and I made pumpkin bread and mango-pineapple bread together this week, and I will be making another loaf of pumpkin bread to trade with Kate tomorrow - she made a red bean bread for me! I can’t wait to try it. My housemate Taylor O is away at a physics conference, maybe there will still be some left for her when she’s back on Wednesday evening.

Week 7: Karaoke, festivals, and a thunderstorm

Eric was out of the office this week, so Maryam (my office mate) stood in as my mentor this week! For work, I focused on the mechanical side of things with Tatsat. I modified an existing design of the star camera mount from the PIPER mission, ran finite element analysis (1/4/8g, down/lateral, 10/20 lbs), and presented my work at the weekly mechanical meeting. Tatsat asked me to design another camera mount system for this week. It is a completely new design, but it will be more stable than the PIPER mission mount. I also got the flight computer to recognize the star camera by reinstalling the driver, doing a firmware update, and changing the camera’s IP address and subnet mask. I want to get a camera from the picture and analyze it with my astrometry program this week! I also wrote my SPS presentation abstract. Eric and I will talk about export control (i.e. what technical information I am allowed to share at presentations) in Week 8.

On Tuesday, I got caught in a thunderstorm on the way home! A gigantic storm cloud passed over the bus route from NASA to the metro station. From far away it looked like San Francisco fog was rolling in (with lightning), but it was actually sheets of rain and hail so thick that it made the air look gray. Other than that, there was no buildup at all - it was like someone had flipped a switch to start the rain. There was lightning every 20 seconds and branches broke off of the trees and flew around everywhere. I have one video from when the storm was calmest, after that I was afraid that the hail would destroy my phone screen. Unfortunately, my phone got water in it as the storm picked up, otherwise I would have taken more pictures. Traffic was stopped for a solid 15 minutes and the bus never showed up. Me and one other person were able to split an uber to the metro station and I put my phone in rice when I got home.

On Wednesday, Taylor O came back from the AAPT conference. She met the person who designed the AP Physics curriculum and got some awesome merch. I’m glad she’s back, our unit felt really empty without her!

On Thursday, the interns had lunch with the AIP Foundation, who conduct fundraising for AIP. They treated us to some delicious Greek food and told us about their work. They also had some great advice for all of us and shared their stories.

The weather was beautiful for the rest of the week! I visited the Western Market near GWU with Kate on Monday, and we ate arepas and exchanged breads (see last week’s post). On Friday, most of the SPS interns listened to the Todd Marcus Jazz Orchestra at Jazz in the Garden. The last Jazz in the Garden performance is next Friday, and we managed to get enough tickets for everyone to go. Hopefully we can sit closer to the musicians next time. The band sounded great but all the garden-goers were too loud! We also went to the Fiesta Asia Street Fair on Saturday, where me, Anthony, and Div ate mango sago and shared a Pandan taiyaki waffle. Later that day I went up Capitol Hill and came home to make mango sticky rice and cinnamon rolls with Matangi. The interns had a game night in the consignment. I got there late, but we played Filipino poker, slapjack, and ERS. We also sang karaoke until very late at night! On Sunday, my college friend Emma and I visited the National Gallery of Art and ate noodles at Reren Lamen in Chinatown.

Taylor O pointed out that we have less than 20 days left in this internship. I can’t believe that all of us will go our separate ways so soon. Luckily, we will all meet again at PhysCon 2022!

Week 8: Never have I ever been stung by a jellyfish

This week, I designed a new camera mount and presented it to the group. It should be more stable than the one from Week 7. I also took a picture of the back of the lab with the star camera! I made a class wrapper for all of the functions we need for the camera and documented the camera driver program flow. I also completed my first draft of slides for the SPS symposium. Next week, I will need to do a lot of work. On the software side, I need to take a picture of the night sky and analyze it with astrometry, integrate star camera software with other ADCS instruments, and help Eric test installation by putting all the software on a Raspberry Pi. On the hardware side, I need to make sure the camera will fit on the current design - huge oversight on my part but there’s still time to fix it. Then I need to conduct FEA on the new design.

I also contacted NASA a while back about organizing a tour for the SPS Interns, but they have not responded yet. The center’s security is at level “green,” and normally I could sign in visitors with an ID and 48 hours notice. Eric and I are trying to find out if the policy is different for big groups/covid.

Outside of work, the interns had a taco potluck on Monday. I learned how to make caramelized onions, and I will be making them for myself every week until I get bored of them. On Tuesday, I played frisbee with the NASA group! It was unusually hot and humid and we all slowed down by the end, but we had a great time. On Wednesday, I visited a nearby bar called CIRCA with my friend Kate. We were still hungry afterwards and we visited the Western market for something more substantial. On Thursday, the interns visited NIST! My favorite part was walking through the nuclear reactor/neutron collider building. There were radiation warning signs everywhere, and we got to walk through a giant geiger counter after the tour was over. On Friday, Brad joined the interns for tater tots at Quigley’s after his career talk. He gave great advice (and trolled us) and was generous enough to pay for our dinner! On Saturday, the interns visited Sandy Point beach. We got in the water, but in the first 15 minutes, both Taylors and Lucy got stung by jellyfish. We stayed out of the water after that. I was surprised because I thought jellyfish didn’t come closer than chest-deep water, but they were all over the shoreline. There were also a lot of little kids with buckets who would catch jellyfish and bury them in the sand.

Other news: my family was able to leave China last week and are staying in California. They are planning to be in the US until early September. I’m super excited to see them after this internship ends, though the idea of this experience ending is quite bittersweet. It has been such a blast to explore the city with everyone and I am looking forward to the last two weeks (!) with you all!

Week 9: the final countdown...

This week, I redesigned the star camera mount again! I updated the dummy camera model in Solidworks to reflect the actual size of the camera, and added a part to represent the lens holder. Unfortunately the camera + lens holder together were too big for our current setup - it seems like we used a much smaller model in the previous mission. I designed a new mount system that keeps the camera in the right place and uses less surface area, and looked for different outer shell sizes. Next week I’ll pick a good size outer shell and run FEA on the mount system. On the software side, the camera’s exposure time is now adjustable! Next week I will need to clean up the camera driver software wrapper and software install documentation, and upload all my software to EXCLAIM’s Github. It was cloudy all week, so we couldn’t test the camera. It is supposed to be clear on Wednesday so I might work until it gets dark and photograph the sky then. Other than that, both my SPS presentation and my mandatory NASA intern poster are done. I will be practicing all through next week!

Outside of work, the interns played DnD on Tuesday. Apparently we have been in the same cave for 3 weeks. We are trying to have another session in Week 10, though I’m not sure that we can finish this campaign in one session. Maybe the interns can stay in touch by finishing this campaign and playing other games together over zoom! On Wednesday, the interns had a leftovers/breakfast for dinner potluck. I turned my instant mashed potato into pancakes. Taylor O helped me cook them, and in the process she learned how to flip a pancake! I played frisbee at NASA on Thursday. There is a huge deer family that lives on NASA’s campus, and I saw them every day this week. On Friday some of the interns and I visited Duke’s Grocery for burgers and headed to the consignment for karaoke and games. Taylor O and I used even more leftovers and baked snickerdoodles for the group. On Saturday, my cousin Alex and his roommate joined the interns for an amazing all you can eat Korean BBQ dinner at Iron Age Korean Steak House. Then we visited a speakeasy nearby called The Gibson, which had a very relaxed and romantic atmosphere as well as interesting drinks! Today (Sunday) the interns are getting crepes, visiting some Smithsonians, and having a dinner potluck. I’m joining for crepes and we’ll see where the rest of the day takes me. I need to start packing :') it is crazy that we are about to start our last week here...

Week 10: Farewell

I’ve been procrastinating writing this blog post for a long time...I didn’t want to say goodbye!

I got quite a lot of last-minute work done in Week 10. I found a duct with a compatible flange to use for the mount’s outer shell. I finalized the new mount design and uploaded a solidworks file to the sharepoint. I added exposure adjustment to class wrapper and cleaned up the whole program before committing it to the EXCLAIM github. I also made a class wrapper for my astrometry program from earlier this summer and committed it to github. I cleaned up documentation for software installation, and made slides showcasing program flow in iDS and astrometry. Then I uploaded my NASA poster presentation and abstract to the NASA portal for the agency intern presentation and finalized my SPS presentation. I rehearsed both with Eric and the other intern in his group, Diego, and also got to practice at the SPS rehearsal session on Thursday.

The interns returned our things to the consignment (and made some new donations) before having one last potluck, featuring nachos and chickles (cheese + pickles). Later that evening, I picked up my girlfriend Savannah from the airport during a rainstorm. She presented her research to APS for the Leroy Apker award at the same time that the interns presented at the SPS Symposium!

On Symposium day, we gathered in the conference room to watch presentations. Everyone’s projects were so interesting! Apparently John Mather made an appearance at our symposium, but I was so enthralled by everyone’s presentations that I didn’t see him :') At the end, Brad, Kayla, and Mikayla closed the internship and gave us all unique books. I got The Very First Light by John Mather, which is his account of the COBE project and all the work (and drama!) surrounding it. Then we enjoyed a catered lunch and headed back to the dorms. When we got there, Taylor O and her mom and I loaded up Taylor’s car just in time for a sudden torrential downpour! Then I shipped my boxes home and finished packing up my room. The interns headed to Quigley’s to enjoy one last round of tots and say our goodbyes.

I spent my last day and a half in DC with Savannah, and we visited the Washington Monument, Reflecting Pool, Lincoln Memorial, Botanical Gardens, Museum of Natural History (where we ran into Anthony and his family!), and Dupont Circle. We also tried out the electric scooters!

Some closing thoughts: When we first got to DC, Taylor O and I talked about how we thought this internship would change our lives, and it has certainly upended my future plans (in a good way). I’ll miss all of you (interns and mentors) and I hope we will see each other again at Physcon 2022!