2023 NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Interns

[The New Zealand Space Agency logo appears in white and grey on a dark blue background. It then disappears and is replaced by 2 logos of the same colour side by side that read ‘Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment Hīkina Whakatutuki’ and ‘Te Kāwanatanga o Aotearoa New Zealand Government’.]

[Jack and Rohan are standing in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory grounds in front of some trees and seating areas. A caption pops up for a few seconds at the bottom left of the screen that reads ‘Jack Naish, NZ Space Scholarship Recipient’.]

Jack Naish: What was your very first introduction to robotics? What was the spark that kicked off your career?

[A caption pops up for a few seconds at the bottom left of the screen that reads ‘Rohan Thakker, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory’.]

Rohan Thakker: Yeah so basically, I grew up in India and after finishing my 12th grade, which is typically when you enter undergrad, I was really forced to pick like one major between mechanical, electrical, electronics and computer science. And I really just wanted to pick all of them because I was super passionate about learning how everything works. And robotics was something that allowed me to explore like all these majors within one field, it was very attractive.

In addition to that, I was always fascinated with, you know, sci fi movies and books from Isaac Asimov. So both from a technical perspective, as well as aspirational perspective, it was the right fit for me.

Jack Naish: You've been working at JPL for several years. What are some of the lessons you've learned over that time? And what advice would you give to people who are interested in maybe a career in robotics, but not sure where to jump in?

Rohan Thakker: Yeah, so I think the best career advice I got when I joined JPL from my manager at that time, or he wasn't directly my manager, but now he is my manager, Brett Kennedy. And his advice was, we don't hire smart people to tell them what they should work on. We hire smart people so that they come in, and they tell us what we should be working on. And I've really taken that advice throughout my career at JPL.

So whatever teams I joined, this is what I would recommend all the interns to do like when you join the industry. Don't be in this attitude where you know, you will do what your manager tells you to do, try to understand what the project is trying to do and come in and bring in your own ideas.

So I also want to thank Jack for joining our team. Jack was originally hired to work on reinforcement learning algorithms to explore some of the gaits for unconsolidated terrain traversal on surface like over granular sand, or fresh snow that might come from the plumes on Enceladus. But in the process, he has contributed to several other areas.

Jack Naish: I'm really lucky to be able to accumulate all this experience and then take it forward into my masters studies, which are fast approaching and then hopefully, I'll be able to bring it back to JPL when I return at some point in the future. So thank you, Rohan.

[The New Zealand Space Agency logo appears on screen.]

Kia ora koutou, hi everyone, I'm Michaela and I am currently undertaking an internship here at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab and I'm actually coming to the end of my internship. It's been an absolutely amazing experience and I can't wait to see what's next.

So my highlight here at JPL, I've had so many, I was able to go out into the field and I talked about it in my previous video, that was an amazing thing. I'm a field geologist at heart, so being back out in the field after several years of COVID was amazing, being able to get out there, experience the rocks, experience a new environment.

Another highlight of being here is just being able to be in these labs with such high precision analytical machines, which I again, haven't had a lot of opportunity with back at home so it's been really good to be to be able to undertake my research here. And then finally,the biggest highlight of my trip has actually been the people.

It's all about connection here. And I've really, really been thankful for the opportunity to network and meet people. And what I'm really thankful for is that these people are willing to give up their time, I've sent out some emails and they're here, but they've responded and given me you know, half an hour or an hour of their time to just sit down at lunch and just chat about them and their journeys and their careers and how they've changed over time and I've just been so blessed and so like mind boggled over the progression from maybe what they started studying was not what they ended up doing here at JPL but their journey to get there has just been so impressive. And so it's been really great and really, I'm really grateful to be able to kind of start to dip my toes into these different avenues and learn about all the different opportunities that I could potentially explore in the future.

The big thing I'm gonna miss most from here at NASA JPL, besides the people, of course, is just being in the hub of it, being right in the middle of where all of this amazing acience and technology research is going on. Nowhere else in the world can you see the start of the beginning of a big science question. So is there life on Mars? Was there ever life on Mars? These big, big astrobiology or big science questions that are so easy to ask but so difficult to answer. But nowhere else in the world can you see this question be asked and then see the implementation all the way from the question being asked to some science to help support it to then a mission design, and then mission funding and then actually building the mission concept, and then launching it and then seeing it get to where it's supposed to go, so say Mars, and then actually start to get the data back to start to answer this big science question.

If you're a geology student, just go for it. Get involved, apply next year, have a go and I wish you all the best and I really hope to see you here next year.

Michaela Dobson: Kia ora koutou. Ko Michaela toku ingoa. Hi, everyone I'm Michaela and I am a PhD student currently at NASA JPL. And I'm doing an internship here with Dr. Michael Tuite.

Michael Tuite: Hi, Michaela.

Michaela Dobson: And so, I am working in the astrobiogeochemistry lab. And yeah today, we're just gonna chat to Michael about his story, how he came to be the manager of the astrobiogeochemistry lab his background and what he's working on. So yeah, so Dr Michael Tuite, tell me a bit about yourself.

Michael Tuite: I was born at a very young age… I came to, I had a previous career in information technology. And didn't earn my PhD until I was well into my 40s. But I I've explained to you a couple times where I like to tell the story that when I was a teenager in high school, I told my guidance counsellor that when she asked me what I wanted to do, when I grew up, I wanted to be an exobiologist. Eventually, I did wind you know after a career working in information technology at the University of Virginia, I wound up earning a first a master's degree and then a PhD in within the environmental science programme. So not within a geology really a planetary science programme. You know, that just turned out to be a skill set that, you know, fit very nicely in astrobiology and I responded to an ad and, you know, quickly wound up as a postdoc here at JPL, and it's just history since then.

Michaela Dobson: So, what then do you specifically work on here versus what you worked on for your PhD if you've come from an environmental science background, but you're now in the exobiology astrobiology kind of space?

Michael Tuite: In my dissertation work I was looking at nitrogen isotopes in ancient in Devonian age 400-million-year-old oceans, understanding the biogeochemical cycles and what kind of what was the microbial ecosystem like? And you know, that's immediate right now, Mars 2020 is exploring Jezero Crater, which was a lake oh, three and a half billion years ago.

Michaela Dobson: Yeah. So, you mention Mars 2020. So, are you working on that at the moment? Is that part of your role here at JPL?

Michael Tuite: Well, it is, I mean, it's half of my role, or half of my half of my pay cheque comes from Mars 2020 mission. And so, you know, that entails looking at lots of pictures of rocks on Mars and helping to make decisions about which ones we will sample because Mars 2020, of course, is very special in that it will result in the return, or bringing samples from Mars to the Earth, for study in laboratories. Every time we get pictures and data back from Mars, there's that component, that's often exciting, right? Because we're seeing stuff that obviously no one has ever seen before, and you know the interpretation can be very challenging. But if I'm looking at an ancient Earth rock, and I find a molecule that I didn't expect to be there, that's often exciting too or no one else had ever found. You know, and of course, working with our lovely interns, you know, is always a, always a highlight of every year.

Michaela Dobson: So then, what would your advice be for, say, an intern in New Zealand that would like to come potentially join the Lab or get involved at JPL? Perhaps they're a geology or biology student?

Michael Tuite: You tell me. What's been your experience here at JPL in talking to people even to, you know, well-established scientists, do they slam the door in your face?

Michaela Dobson: No everyone's been so lovely. Everyone's been really welcoming. And just willing to give up time to just even chat for half an hour over a coffee about their life experience and what they've been through. Yeah, I've just found, I found it to be really warm, in terms of everyone is just really obviously excited about what they do excited about what they research or what they build or study, but also just really excited to pass that on.

Michael Tuite: For me, especially right, the attraction of astrobiology is that it's such a diverse discipline, you know, with so many aspects or so many ways to address the big question, right? And that's exactly it and of course, the other part of it is it does address one of the most compelling questions in science, right? Are we alone? And so, you know, to have a have a hand in addressing that question is now really, ultimately very satisfying.

Michaela Dobson: Very mind boggling.

Michael Tuite: Right, and it's not purely abstract, right? We actually build things that go to other planets to look for this stuff.

Michaela Dobson: I think also, it kind of sounds like astrobiology is all around you. So, I mean, I know in your free time you like to do hiking, you like to work with Scouts and get involved in the natural world?

Michael Tuite: Well, that's right. I mean, I'm very much a natural historian, you know, I like to study the trees and the, you know, the, the bugs and the birds and, you know, to understand my environment. But that's I often at night, when I'm sitting with a book or I'm in the lab, you know, I'm thinking about, well, what was the environment in this three and a half billion year old lake, you know, based in part upon my understanding, or study, or just observation of the environment around me and understanding that it's, you know, ecology is complex, discovering, discovering that there was, you know, that say we find one cell on Mars I mean, that's, that's fantastic. And it kind of addresses the big question, but it just opens up the next really big question, which is, you know, the field of Astroecology, right? Because no critter lives by itself, right, didn't appear and then sits there without any mates or, you know, any without biogeochemical cycles, and, you know, all kinds of other biotic and abiotic considerations. And so, you know, I see that as a skill, the discovery of, especially taking on some kind of microbial life from even 3 billion years ago on Mars really just opens up kind of a whole...

Michaela Dobson: Another set of questions to answer.

Michael Tuite: Right, right. Yeah. Where so what, what, what was its environment? What did it who were who else lived there? How did how did elements get cycled? What was the temperature like, you know, what, how did what was the seasonality? You know there's just, there's just so much to understand.

Michaela Dobson: Awesome okay, well, thank you so much for chatting. And, yeah, hopefully, we'll see some more New Zealand interns in your lab soon.

Michael Tuite: That'd be great. Make sure you pack some more Rs with you.

Michaela Dobson: Rs, not any more Whittaker's chocolate?

Michael Tuite: Oh, yeah, you can bring that too.

Leah Albrow: Hi everyone, my name's Leah and I've just finished my 14-week internship here at JPL. I was working with the astrophysics division on a project involving exoplanets.

Jack Naish: Hi everyone, my name's Jack. I'm one of the Kiwi interns currently working here at the Jet Propulsion Lab.

Celine Jane: Hi, my name is Celine, I'm here at the Jet Propulsion Lab in California.

Daniel Wrench: Tēnā koutou katoa, ko Daniel toku ingoa. I'm one of the five New Zealand interns at JPL this year. My project was doing some really interesting work on machine learning models and applying that to some engineering and 3D printing.

Celine Jane: I think the highlight of my time here at JPL has been meeting the director of JPL Dr. Laurie Leshin, we had a dinner with her.

Jack Naish: The biggest highlight of working at JPL so far has been the opportunity to work on the Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor, now this is a like five-metre robot snake designed to one one day go and seek out life on on new worlds.

Leah Albrow: I've done a lot of really cool things while I've been here at JPL. One of my highlights was going to New Mexico for the American Astronomical Society's summer meeting. And I also got to work on the exoplanet exploration booth. So I was showing members of the astronomical community the tools that I had been working on developing throughout my internship.

Daniel Wrench: Living in a brand new place and all the fun that comes with learning what it's like to live in a completely different country but also as a major space geek just seeing Mars rovers in the Mars Yard, seeing spacecraft being built in the Clean Room. It's a dream come true for for someone like me.

Leah Albrow: I think the biggest surprise when I was coming to JPL was, I guess I was expecting it to be like super intense and scary the whole time.

Celine Jane: The different types of science and engineering that they do here. There's a such a variety of science and engineering that I hadn't even thought about existing.

Jack Naish: People are super open and inviting so you can just sit down in the cafeteria and be talking to a Mars rover engineer. Or you can walk through an office building and knock on people's door and have a conversation.

Daniel Wrench: I knew it as this place that does amazing, you know, Mars robotic exploration, but just the breadth of work that they do here from Earth science to astrophysics to lunar geology to a lot of interesting software work. I never knew how diverse it was.

Celine Jane: One of the biggest challenges of my time here at JPL has been the project that I'm working on has a lot of different engineering aspects to it.

Leah Albrow: I was working with new types of data that I wasn't necessarily familiar with.

Daniel Wrench: Kinda applying machine learning to a field that I knew nothing about.

Leah Albrow: So although I wasn't necessarily learning any new coding languages, or anything like that, I was working with radial velocity data.

Celine Jane: At NASA JPL, what I will miss the most is the colleagues that I've been working with.

Jack Naish: The chance to just walk up to people here and ask them fascinating questions. There's a tremendous amount of knowledge stored in the minds of everyone here.

Daniel Wrench: Hard to toss up between the spacecraft and the people. They're both really cool, the robots aren't quite as friendly, but they're the ones going into space so but the people have been fantastic so that's probably what I'll miss the most.

Leah Albrow: Overall, my experience at JPL has been just absolutely amazing.

Daniel Wrench: Absolutely apply for this opportunity.

Celine Jane: Big thank you to the New Zealand Space Agency for this amazing opportunity.

Jack Naish: None of this work that we've done would have been possible without their support.

Leah Albrow: And I know that we've received really positive feedback from our mentors and I just hope that we've made everyone at home proud.

Daniel Wrench: Kia ora koutou, my name's Daniel Wrench. I'm one of the New Zealand interns here at NASA's JPL. And I'm here with one of my mentors.

Ryan Watkins: And I'm Ryan Watkins. I'm a mechanical engineer here and I primarily work on research and development.

Daniel Wrench: Well, thank you for talking with me, Ryan. So tell me, how did you come to be here at the amazing JPL?

Ryan Watkins: Yeah, maybe not the most glamorous of stories. But, you know, in, in school, you're often kind of going to career fairs, things like that. And they always tell you to submit your resume online. And kind of in the early days of looking for jobs, I thought that was sufficient to get a job. And it wasn't until one of my mentors in grad school kind of really told me that the world works based on meeting people that I got some connections in an interview with someone that worked here at JPL, interviewed at a career fair. And then two months later, I was working here. It all kind of came out of the blue. Yeah.

Daniel Wrench: Did you always know that you wanted to be an engineer? Where did that come from do you think?

Ryan Watkins: I, yeah, I was lucky enough to know I wanted to be an engineer very young. I have an older brother that's 4 years older than me. And when he started touring schools at the end of high school, I kind of tagged along on a lot of those. And I was just fascinated from there.

Daniel Wrench: Yeah, were you one to like pull things apart and try to put them back together, or?

Ryan Watkins: Yes, often not being able to fully put them back together. But yes, that was very much my childhood.

Daniel Wrench: And you've been here for a, for a few years, right?

Ryan Watkins: Yeah, just over 8 years now.

Daniel Wrench: And what do you, what do you like about JPL what's it like as a place to work for for that period of time?

Ryan Watkins: Yeah, JPL is a very unique kind of center of engineering. All of the projects we work on are one of a kind so we're very rarely doing the same thing. And then on top of that, we're working on things that pretty much no one else is working on in the world. You know, we're designing robots to land on other planets, or we're trying to think of ways to find life in the solar system.

Daniel Wrench: So you talk about like meeting people and networking and progressing your career like that. What would you say about, you know, the types of people you've met here at JPL? Is do you think it's quite a special special group here in particular?

Ryan Watkins: Yes. I mean, I very distinctly remember when I interviewed here, I found a lot of, you know, engineers in school that were happy with maybe not necessarily understanding all of the ins and outs of things. They're just told to do something a certain way and they do it that way without questioning it. And pretty much everyone that I work with here is not satisfied with being told how to do something. They want to know why we're doing it so that they can ultimately do it better. And that just makes for a really fun workplace.

Daniel Wrench: Yeah. Very cool.

Leah Albrow: Hi, I'm Leah and I'm here on the New Zealand Space Scholarship at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. And today I'm here with my mentor and we're going to be talking with you a little bit about the project that I'm working on here, and my experience so far. So would you like to introduce yourself?

Anjali Tripathi: Sure, my name is Anjali Tripathi. I am a scientist, an astrophysicist by training who has the title of being NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program Science Ambassador, which encapsulates the work that I do on exoplanets of designing new missions, as well as spreading outreach and joy for the subject, because there's a lot to do and as you'll see, in our work with Leah, there's always room for more people to get involved.

Leah Albrow: So could you maybe talk a little more about you got here at JPL, and sort of what motivates you to work on exoplanets?

Anjali Tripathi: I'm really excited to have Leah here as my intern, because I actually started at JPL as an intern back in 2004 and 2005. So back in the day, I was working on the Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, just when they were getting to Mars, for the first time that we were doing this whole era of rovers regularly on the surface. And I left and came back, you know, almost 20 years later. And I don't think I expected that at the time. So first of all, we hope you'll come back Leah. But also, I think it speaks a lot to the value of internships and educational opportunities because here at JPL, we really want people to have all kinds of experiences, like we're here in our auditorium, where we have this amazing model of the Cassini mission, which went to Saturn and while I don't study Saturn, I study planets outside of the solar system, Leah and all of the other Kiwi interns here are learning all about Mars and the other places that we explore. So I think the path to JPL starts with an internship in a lot of cases, but also continues through a lot of work in academic astronomy, the various sciences and engineering. And I think it's worth saying one other thing, which is that Leah knows, I have sort of a weird job here at JPL. I used to help manage our government relations office, and I used to work in the White House. And so it's one of these things that I work a lot with the artists who do a lot of the models. Now, that's a real picture of Saturn. But you know, there's artists who help with us, the business people, you know, the whole range of folks who make going to space possible. And I think that's one really exciting thing, that it doesn't really matter what you study that you can be involved. But of course, studying physics, math, computer science, all all do really help.

Leah Albrow: What makes you like really excited about work on exoplanets now?

Anjali Tripathi: So in if you lived at any point in the past before 1781, you knew about the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. And that was it. In 1781, we found Uranus. And, you know, the progression for finding Neptune, and you know, these other worlds in the solar system, whether they're dwarf planets like Pluto, it was sort of a slow progression. But then in, you know, my lifetime in the 1980s, and 90s, we've actually found planets outside of the solar system. And so there's just this huge leap forward. And now we know there are over 5000 exoplanets, and we're finding more all the time that are closer and closer to what we know about the Earth and worlds that we know as well as planets that are very different from our own. And so it's this really exciting sort of renaissance of studying the planets that I think there isn't a better time to be getting involved in. And the whole future of astronomy related to Leah's project including is about what other planets we'll find in the future with the habitable worlds observatory. And so the future of astronomy is largely focused around exoplanets.

Leah Albrow: So a big part of my project while I've been here has been looking into stars that we think could have habitable planets around them, and sort of looking at the ways that we can study these stars going forwards to best support science in the future. So one thing that I've really enjoyed coming here is seeing how, particularly with astronomy, it's such a field that you need to be supporting the future at all times, like the work that you're doing here might not necessarily culminate in a result now, but we're still using results from decades ago, we're still doing work that's going to be used for decades. So the scope of astronomy has been a really cool thing to see done here at JPL.

Anjali Tripathi: So I think New Zealand is in this really unique place in the space game. Because you have both the work of the New Zealand Space Agency working with other governments and academic partners like JPL. You have things like Rocket Lab in the commercial space, that's actually making a lot of this possible. And so you actually get the full end-to-end spectrum of space participation in New Zealand. And I think it's really exciting, both obviously, on the academic side that we can work together on the science that we can do. But also the science isn't just about astronomy just isn't about other planets, it's also about our own planet. And so thinking about like cyclones, and you know, sea level rise, there's a lot of work that we do, even right here at JPL, that uses satellites to study our home planet, that I think is a great place to start getting involved in that you might think, oh I study Earth science, I study rocks, you know, I can go on a mountaintop, to study it. But actually, you can do that from space. So I think the opportunities to get involved are actually broader than most people might think. And a lot of it I do think comes from being in research programs, whether those are independent projects with local university professors, or, you know, coming and doing an internship. So I know I keep talking about internships as being great. But I think that is one way that everybody, myself included, you as well have found to sort of broaden your world and get beyond your little bubble. Because whether you're in New Zealand, or Oklahoma, or Los Angeles, you know, we each have our own little bubbles that you're not really aware of what else is out there. And so coming and seeing, you know, the Huygens-Cassini models up close is one way that you get a broader sense of the world.

Leah Albrow: And I guess one thing that's been really cool to see here, is how much of the technology at JPL can be applied to other things that aren't just astrophysics, as you kind of mentioned that like we can do climate science with a lot of the technology that's developed here, we can use that same technology for different applications, like medical technology has been developed through stuff that was originally developed for space. So by like supporting and working in technology, you push like all sectors forward at the same time, which I think is really powerful.

Anjali Tripathi: And I think it's one of these cool things is that when you go to school, you can choose a major, right? You can study physics, or you can study math or engineering. They seem very distinct. But when you're building a spacecraft, right, its goal is to do science, but you need all of the engineering to get there. And so I think that is one difference about being in maybe a space related field is that the science and engineering come together a lot more closely than they would on a ground based telescope or other exploration.

Leah: Yeah, definitely. Like one of my biggest things when I was at university was that I took some computer science and I took some maths as well as doing my physics degree. And all the skills that I learned from maths and from computer science has been really beneficial for my work here. So I guess I would say to anyone who doesn't quite know what they want to do is that take take diverse options because the skills that you pick up in other areas can be really beneficial for the work that you do in other areas.

Anjali Tripathi: So I would say yeah, the other tips are it's really useful to read a lot, whether it's, you know, magazines like Science and Nature, which will give you a sense of what's going on at the cutting edge in different fields. But also just talking to people, like most scientists, like me, are really happy to get an email with someone saying they're enthusiastic and would like to work with you. And so don't be shy, because I think a lot of times we self select from reaching out to people. But I think if you actually reach out, maybe there isn't an immediate connection, but other people can help. So the reading and reaching out is one thing. The the other thing I would say is for Leah's project, where she is contributing to this project of the habitable worlds observatories precursor stars list. So these are the stars that we're going to look around to find a planet as small as Earth in the right location where water could probably be liquid today. It's really exciting that we're thinking about not only what science can we do, but how can we involve the entire public in this. And so it's using this combination of Leah's amazing writing skills - I have to say, I didn't like writing much when I was in school but I found it's really important, and I now rather like it, to how do we communicate that to the public so that amateur astronomers can get involved in thinking about this and making measurements which is related to Leah's other project on Exoplanet Watch. As well as just getting everybody involved, whether they're school children, or senior citizens, and everyone in between, because space is sort of all around us. Everyone looks up at the night sky. We've got, you know, names and stories from antiquity all the way to present. And so getting a sense of how that all fits together, and where the cutting edge research fits into that story is pretty cool. So I'm really happy that we have Leah here to help us with that.

Leah Albrow: And lastly, do you have a favourite exoplanet?

Anjali Tripathi: My favorite exoplanet that I often tell people about is called Planet Hunters 1b, because it was found by a citizen science project. I'm very partial to engaging the community. And so it's a double, it's a quadruple system so you have 2 binary stars, they're going around each other and this planet is I think in between them so we always talk about how you could have 4 sunrises and sunsets on this planet, although honestly, I don't know if they're close enough that you would actually get that effect. So I like that it's something that was found by the general public that it wasn't just a group of us off in the lab finding and that it's in a quadruple system. What's yours?

Leah Albrow: 4 sunsets is quite whimsical. Favourite exoplanet? I feel like I've never really thought about this question. I do have a lot of fond memories of when like the TRAPPIST like system was first discovered. Because it was one of it was when I was like really first getting into physics and astronomy, like with my friends, not just like as an academic thing. And I remember like my friend like he literally called me when the paper was released talking about that system. And he was like, Leah, they found so many potential like Earth like planets. And like we just had a big nerd out in the morning. And yeah, so that system I have a lot of fond memories about.

Anjali Tripathi: And it's kind of crazy, right? But you are now looking at the stars where we will make those sorts of discoveries so you are part of that story already.

Leah Albrow: Exactly. And that's felt really amazing coming here.

Anjali Tripathi: Well, we're really happy to have you here and hope to see more Kiwis out here soon.

Leah Albrow: Yeah, thank you so much for making the time to sit down and have a chat.
Anjali Tripathi: Thank you.

Kia ora koutou, ko Michaela taku ingoa. Hi, everyone, I'm Michaela. I am a current PhD student at Waipapa Taumata Rau, the University of Auckland. And at the moment, I have just started my internship here at NASA Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena.

It's been amazing so far, everyone has been super welcoming. There's been I've had, I've made a lot of connections, I've had a lot of opportunities already. I've been here for just over a week and a bit and I've already been out into the field. So I went out to my field site. So I study geology, and in particular astrobiology and how you can use this to understand life on other worlds such as Mars, and that is what I'm kind of looking at here at NASA JPL Lab.

And so we went out into the field, and we did some mapping on an analogue site in Nevada, and it was in the middle of the desert so it was above 30 degrees every day so very, very warm compared to New Zealand at the moment. But it was a really lovely experience. I got to go out with my supervisor, we did some geologic mapping, I got to see some really cool deposits. And now I'm coming back into the lab and I'm starting to process these deposits, and see what they can inform us when it comes to potential sample return with the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover.

So my internship still has about 3 months left. And I'm really excited to start to process my samples and start to apply it to the Mars 2020 rover mission, but also start to make connections with other people and other divisions within JPL. I have already had a lot of people come up to me and chat and everyone's been so welcoming and so lovely. And I can't wait to get more involved within the broader JPL community.

[Celine stands in front of a museum exhibit of a satelite. Various shots of the building, equipment and a presentation are cut in throughout the video]

Kia ora, I'm Celine Jane. I'm from Wellington, New Zealand. And I'm studying a Masters of Engineering at Victoria University of Wellington. My first impressions of JPL have been that it's such an enormous place, both physically and also in terms of the breadth and depth of research and science and engineering that they do here.

It's just such a massive place, and so many, there's so many different areas of expertise and different missions. And it's just been overwhelming, but in a good way, I'm really excited to learn about all the different missions and all the different types of engineering and research that they're doing here.

Something that I've learnt and have found really interesting at JPL is just the really sort of niche areas of research that they do here. For example, the other day, I went to a really small little lab that focused on finding rocks and other geological items that were similar to what you'd find on Mars, so that researchers and scientists could develop tools and science around the types of rocks that they'd find on Mars. And I just thought it was really interesting. It's just something that I've never even thought thought about as a topic to research.

So it's been really interesting finding out all these different niche little areas of research and meeting everyone who works on the missions and such.

[Daniel stands in front of a museum exhibit of part of a space craft. Various shots of the building and its surroundings, equipment and people working are cut in throughout the video]

Kia ora, my name’s Daniel. I am studying a PhD in Physics at Victoria University of Wellington. We've just finished our first week here at the NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab.

It's been an absolutely amazing start to our time here, we got a tour of the facilities, and it's really like a theme park, all the cool things we've been able to see; the Mars Yard where they test out the rovers, the big clean room where they're building spacecraft like the Europa Clipper.

And all in all, it's just been so amazing to be shown around such an incredible world-renowned facility. In particular, what they've emphasised to us here at JPL is use it as a real networking opportunity.

So I'm really looking forward to just making all these connections with researchers at the top of their fields. And I think the career opportunities both for all of us here and what we can bring back to New Zealand. I can already see is going to be incredibly, incredibly valuable.

Living in California in the beautiful little town of Pasadena has been a awesome experience so far getting used to cars on the other side of the road. And I'm really looking forward to trying some Mexican food which they're famous for here. And kind of exploring the area, going on hikes, looking out for scorpions or other fascinating wildlife
like that we don't get back in New Zealand.

So a lot to do and we've already had such an exciting time in just the short week that we've been here so far.

[Leah stands in front of a museum exhibit of posters. Various shots of the museum exhibits and interns are cut in throughout the video]

Hello, my name is Leah and I'm one of the interns here at Jet Propulsion Lab from New Zealand. I'm a student from the University of Canterbury where I study astronomy, and I'm here working on exoplanets, which is ways to detect them, and ways that we can get people to care about them.

So the first part of my project, I've been doing a bit of a literature review. So I've been reading a lot of different papers and learning things about a lot of stars that can have planets around them. And hopefully that'll be something we can publish on NASA's website and have that as a resource for people going forward.
I've been learning a lot about certain words that you can use and that you can't use to communicate effectively. And the fact that words have very different connotations in astronomy, for example, than it does in regular day-to-day life.

I've really enjoyed arriving here at JPL and meeting a lot of different scientists and engineers, and a lot of the other interns have all been really welcoming and nice. So already started making a few friends. And hopefully this weekend, we can go out and see some of LA.

Hi, I'm Celine Jane. And I'm studying a Master of Engineering at Victoria University of Wellington. At NASA JPL, I will be working on a project called assured micro patching, or AMP for short. This means I'll be working on the capability to inject like a tiny little piece of code into a satellite or a spacecraft while it's still running, rather than shutting it down and rebooting it. At NASA, I'm most looking forward to meeting top research engineers and scientists from the field, learning how they solve problems and how they go about working.

As a child, I wasn't super interested in space but I was really curious and interested in how things work. I remember at the end of high school is when they first discovered gravitational waves. And that's sort of what got me interested and thinking about how the universe works and that sort of thing. So I actually applied for the Space Scholarship in 2019, when I was in my undergrad, and I got a reasonable way through, but didn't quite make the cut. So when I saw that they were doing it again this year while I was in my postgrad, I thought, you know, I had to apply since I got so far last time, and I've grown so much since then. So I thought it was a good idea to apply.

It was really cool meeting the Administrator and the Deputy Administrator. They were really inspiring and it was really interesting to hear about their experiences at NASA and how they got to where they were.

I would say you don't have to be an engineer or a physicist. There are many different types of roles in the space industry, not just engineering and physics. You know, there's comms, there's psychology, there's biology, so if you're interested in it, you can probably apply it to the space sector.

My name's Daniel Wrench, and I'm doing a PhD in Physics at Victoria University of Wellington. At JPL, I'll be using a popular algorithm from AI called deep learning and using that to try and speed up an engineering calculation called topology optimisation.

I'm really looking forward to just being a part of NASA at this really exciting time that we're seeing for the space industry worldwide, and getting to meet some people at the forefront of their field.

I'd say I've been very curious from a very young age and as a teenager, I started becoming really interested in space. And when I came to university, I tried to share that passion for other students, and I helped found the New Zealand Students' Space Association. So when I was in my first year of university, and I was a part of the New Zealand Students' Space Association, I heard about the first round of the New Zealand Space Scholarships. Unfortunately, I didn't qualify and but when I finally found out that I did qualify, and I was studying space science, I knew that I had to apply for this given it was a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Meeting the NASA Administrator and Deputy Administrator was just an absolute dream come true. Especially receiving my NASA pin from Administrator Bill Nelson. And I made a point after the ceremony of going up to him and just saying how thankful I was for all his leadership, particularly around the Artemis Program, to return people to the moon, which I just find so inspiring.

I would say there's never been a better time to pursue a career in space right now. The industry is just growing so much even here in New Zealand, and it's such a cool industry to be a part of, to be exploring outer space and for the good of the Earth as well.

My name is Jack Naish, programme of study is a Master of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, which I'll be studying once I return from JPL.

So I heard about these scholarships just through online channels, in about August last year, and realised that was the first time I was actually eligible to apply since I first heard about them in late 2019 so I jumped at the opportunity.

Since like a year 13 physics trip to Johnson Space Center, in - it would have been - 2018 just been fascinated with space and like the amalgamation of maths and computer science and AI, definitely fascinating.

So at JPL, I will be working on the EELS project, the exobiology extant life survey. This is like a three-metre robotic snake that will be heading to one of Saturn's moons, possibly Enceladus, and I'll be working on control algorithms, with an emphasis on reinforcement learning and AI to try and get this robot to move around.

I'm most excited about the unknown, both in terms of where my work may go in the future, but also meeting the people of JPL and learning from their experience, their expertise, and then bringing that back to New Zealand.

So meeting the NASA leadership was a 'pinch me' moment honestly. I'd obviously seen loads of videos about the NASA Administrator on YouTube, social media channels, but to be there in the same room with him and hear their passion and their words was fascinating.

Yeah, so to future NASA interns and those interested, I would definitely invest time in finding an area of STEM that fascinates you, and setting yourself goals and holding yourself to them. Key there being finding a genuine passion because then motivation and such will follow naturally.

Hi, my name's Leah Albrow. I'm a student at the University of Canterbury and I'm doing an honours degree in astronomy. When I go to NASA JPL, I'm going to be working on the Eyes on Exoplanets project and Exoplanet Watch.

One's a citizen science project where we're encouraging anyone with access to a telescope to observe exoplanet transits, so we can learn more about their transit timings and the uncertainty around that. So that we can use the James Webb Space Telescope and other large telescopes to better optimise that time. And also going to be collecting all the data sets and trying to learn more about these exoplanets like their atmospheres, and transit times, the size relative to the star, all sorts of things that we can use to try and find life.

So an exoplanet is a planet that's not in our solar system. So just not orbiting the sun. When I go to JPL, I'm really excited just to see the diversity of research that's done there and to meet some scientists who are really at the forefront of their field, and just to see the way that they work and think and approach problems. And I think I'm going to take a lot from that.

I applied to work at JPL because I was really interested in pursuing a career in science and research and I wanted to learn how to research from the best.

I've always been interested in space and astronomy, ever since I was really young. I was super interested in physics, like black holes, and all that really mind bending physical phenomena,
but also just going down to Mount John Observatory and Lake Tekapo and seeing the dark sky reserve and the Aoraki Mackenzie Dark Sky Reserve. And that was very profound for me as a child, like just seeing how beautiful it really was.

My favorite thing about meeting the NASA leadership today was you can really tell the vision that they had for the future. They kept saying things about how we're in the golden age of space exploration, and we're the Artemis generation. And they clearly had such hope and vision for the future of aerospace. And the way that they talked about it as that international effort is really exciting, wanting to be a scientist myself.

My biggest advice to people who want to get involved in astronomy is apply for anything even if you don't think that you're ready for it. And don't ever think that anything's too hard to learn or that something is difficult. You can learn anything. It's the mental blocks that you put for yourself that stop you from being able to do it.

Kia ora koutou, ko Michaela toku ingoa. Hi everyone, I'm Michaela and I am a PhD student at Waipapa Taumata Rau, the University of Auckland and I study a PhD in geology, which looks at the oldest evidence of life in the geologic record, and how we can apply this to looking for potential life on Mars.

So at NASA JPL, my internship will be looking at a fossilised hydrothermal system, and how we can apply that to look for potential life on Mars. So I'm really excited for this internship because I want to undertake the opportunity to go over to one of the leading research facilities in the world for space science, and learn some really valuable skills that I can then bring back to New Zealand and help grow our space sector. What I am expecting to get from this internship is really valuable skills and connections.

I want to pursue academia and I'm really passionate about getting students and particularly young women involved in STEM. So I'm hoping that this internship will allow me to create really valuable connections and networks, so that I can help be a role model and then provide the opportunities for the next generation coming through in New Zealand.

So today, we met the NASA Administrator and Deputy Administrator. And it was an amazing opportunity, I actually was really lucky to have a one-on-one conversation with Pam afterwards, who's the Deputy NASA Administrator and she had some really valuable advice and particularly around what it's like being a woman in the space sector. And she said that she finds everyone at JPL, especially the female network are really inclusive and really there to help build each other up and create this really lovely environment for females coming through STEM.

So I found out about this internship opportunity online. So I knew about it previously from other years of the internship. And I thought that where I am at the moment with my PhD and what I'm studying, it was the perfect time for me to apply for the internship.

Yeah, so I've always been interested in space. What I really love about New Zealand is that we have one of the best dark skies in the world, even in our biggest city, Tāmaki Makaurau, you can still see space at night. So it's really great that space is that one thing in New Zealand that can actually connect all of us together and get us really passionate about science.

So I'm actually really grateful that I was selected this year as the first New Zealand geology student to be selected for NASA internship, which has predominantly been for engineering and astronomy students. And I think it's really great to see this diversification and students selected because when it comes to space and the space sector, there is a lot of opportunities for a wide range of people from a bunch of different backgrounds. And if we want to be going out into space and finding evidence of life, we actually need to be able to have people from a broad range of backgrounds to answer these big questions.