Brian's NASA Experiences

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NASA Experiences

I have participated in the following NASA Programs. You can find out more information on these programs and other student opportunities at NASA by going to the Internship Opportunities page page I maintain for the NASA Academy Alumni Association.

NASA Academy

The Academy is a unique summer institute of higher learning whose goal is to guide future leaders of the space program. Graduate and undergraduate students in the physical sciences, engineering, mathematics, and computer science come to participating NASA Center (currently the Ames Research Center, Dryden Flight Research Center, and Goddard Space Flight Center) for a comprehensive 10-week introduction to the aerospace program and for a research experience on a Director's Discretionary Fund project.

I attended the NASA Academy (at the time called the NASA Space Academy) at the Goddard Space Flight Center in the summer of 1994. In addition to getting an in depth introduction to the space prgram, I also worked with Doug Leviton in the Optics Branch developing a way to measure encircled energy for ultraviolet detectors. In our "free" time, the other students and I assisted the Get Away Special office with a new educational initiative they were developing to allow the educational community an easier way of flying experiments in GAS cans. We chose to call our project Children Learning About Space Science (CLASS), and today's it's known as the Space Experiement Module program. We created a homepage for our summer experience.

I was hired after the summer program to help plan and adminster the following summer's program as the Director of Communications. The students that summer also put together homepage for that summer.

You can learn more about the NASA Academy and find out how to apply by looking at the NASA Academy homepage.

Langley Aerospace Research Summer Scholars program

The Langley Aerospace Research Summer Scholars (LARSS) program is a 10-week research internship at the NASA/Langley Research Center (LaRC) in Hampton, Virginia. The program requires you to complete a research project under the supervision of a LaRC mentor. Students also attend technical lectures by prominent engineers and scientists and take tours of wind tunnels, computational facilities and laboratories.

I aattended LARSS in the summer of 1993 and worked with David Throckmorton in the Aerothermodynamics Branch developing a technique to correct the optical distortion of thermodynamic data that was collected when the Shuttle Orbiter Columbia returned from space.

More information on the program can be obtained by visiting the LARSS Program homepage

Space Life Science Training Program

The Space Life Science Training Program (SLSTP) is an intensive six-week training program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for college students interested in Life Sciences, Bioengineering, or related fields. The purpose of the program is to introduce college students to the field of Space Life Sciences and participants will gain insight into how space life sciences flight experiments are conducted, as well as explore current and future research opportunities in the fields of space biology, life support and ecology. The program allows students to participate in the conceptualization, preparation, pre- and postflight testing, data analysis, and report preparation phases of simulated space flight experiments, including NASA life sciences research. Five semester hours of tuition-free college credits are offered through Florida A&M University (FAMU) after completion of the program.

I worked with the Plant Space Biology Group in the summer of 1992 building a chamber and running experiments to test the effect of different wavelengths of infrared light on the growth of plants.

Additional information on SLSTP can be found on the FAMU SLSTP page.

Case-NASA Cooperative Aerospace R&D Internship Program

This program, held at the Lewis Research Center, provides internships for students of science, engineering, professional administrative and technical areas. The internships provide students with introductory professional experiences to complement their academic programs by giving interns assignments in research and development, technical, and adminstrative projects under the personal guidance of NASA profesional staff members.

After having spent most of the fall of 1998 and spring of 1989 with the Electo-Physics Branch running characterization test on nickel-hydrogen batteries, I continued with the group in the summer of 1989 as part of this program.

The program is now called the Lewis Educational and Research Collaborative Internship Program (LERCIP) and additional information can be found on the web.

DISCLAIMER: I do not speak for any of the organizations listed on any of these pages.
© 1996-2025 Brian J. Roberts
Last updated: 20 October 2005