NASA Careers Take Off with Internships

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Do you dream of working for NASA and contributing to exploration and innovation for the benefit of humanity? The agency’s internship programs provide high school and college students opportunities to advance NASA’s mission in aeronautics, science, technology, and space.  

Claudia Sales, Kassidy McLaughlin, and Julio Treviño started their careers as interns at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, where they continue to explore the secrets of the universe. Their journeys highlight the long-term impact of the NASA’s science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs.

Claudia Sales

“I knew since I was a child that I wanted to work for NASA,” said Claudia Sales, acting X-59 deputy chief engineer X-59 deputy chief engineer and airworthiness certification lead for the agency’s quiet supersonic research aircraft.

Sales’ journey at NASA started in 2005 as a Pathways intern, a NASA work-study (co-op) program. She worked in propulsion and structures branches and supported such projects as the X-43A hypersonic research aircraft (Hyper-X) and the X-37 reusable orbital launch vehicle, where she had the opportunity to perform calculations for thermal estimations and trajectory analyses. She also completed design work with NASA Armstrong’s Experimental Fabrication Shop.

“It had been a dream of mine to be a part of unique, one-of-a-kind flight research projects,” Sales said. “My mentor was amazing at exposing me to a wide variety of experiences and working on something unique to one day be implemented on an air vehicle to make the world a better place.”

Kassidy McLaughlin

Similarly, flight systems engineer Kassidy McLaughlin discovered that mentorship and hands-on experience as an intern were key to her professional development. She currently leads the development of a ground control station at NASA Armstrong.

In high school and college, McLaughlin enrolled in STEM classes, knowing she wanted to pursue a career in engineering. Encouraged by her mother to apply for a NASA internship, McLaughlin’s career began in 2014 as an intern for NASA Armstrong’s Office of STEM Engagement. She later transitioned to the Pathways program.

“My mentor gave me the tools necessary, and encouraged me to ask questions,” McLaughlin said. “He helped show me that I was capable of anything if I set my mind to it.”

During five rotations as an intern, she worked on the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration in the National Airspace System (UAS in the NAS) project. “It is such a rewarding feeling to be in a control room when something you have worked on is flying,” McLaughlin said. That experience inspired her to pursue a career in mechanical engineering.

“NASA Armstrong offered something special when it came to the people,” McLaughlin said. “The culture at the center is so friendly and everyone is so welcoming.”

Julio Treviño

Julio Treviño, lead operations engineer for NASA’s Global Hawk SkyRange project, ensures airworthiness throughout the planning, integration, and flight phases of unique systems and vehicles. He is also a certified mission controller, mission director, and flight test engineer for various agency aircraft.

Much like McLaughlin, Treviño began his journey in 2018 as a Pathway’s intern for the Dynamic and Controls branch at NASA Armstrong. That experience paved the way for success after graduating with a degree in mechanical engineering.

“As an intern, I had the opportunity to work on designing and creating a battery model for an all-electric aircraft,” Treviño said. “It was officially published as a NASA software model for use by anyone throughout the agency.”

Treviño also credits NASA’s culture and people as the best part of his internship. “I had very supportive mentors throughout my time as an intern and the fact that everyone here genuinely loves the work that they do is awesome,” he said.

2025 Application Deadlines

Every year, NASA provides more than 2,000 students the opportunity to impact the agency’s mission through hands-on internships. The 2025 application for fall is May 16, 2025.

To learn more about NASA’s internship programs, application deadlines, and eligibility, visit https://www.nasa.gov/learning-resources/internship-programs/

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Sols 4532-4533: Polygon Heaven

Written by Catherine O’Connell-Cooper, Planetary Geologist at University of New Brunswick

Earth planning date: Monday, May 5, 2025

Our 29-meter weekend drive (about 95 feet) was successful, and we are still in the band of polygon-rich bedrock.

The origin of these cracks is not clear — could they have formed as desiccation cracks as Mars began to get drier, billions of years ago? Or during later periods when groundwater moved through the bedrock? Spending time in this area will help us to tease out their origin by sampling as much of the diversity as we can, from regular bedrock to the stranger textured targets. Touch and Go plans allow only a few hours of science at a given workspace — in this plan, the rover turns on around 9 a.m. local time, and by 2 p.m. we have picked up and moved on to the next stop. So planning on a day like today is quite the balancing act, trying to cram in as much science, as efficiently as possible, in a small amount of time.

On Friday, I helped plan APXS on some of the polygon features, so today we were able to concentrate on more typical bedrock without polygonal features, to compare with our last targets. We wiIl acquire a short APXS integration on the brushed target “Encinitas,” and image the target with MAHLI. In contrast, ChemCam will use LIBS to analyze “Jack Creek,” an elongated vein feature about 30 centimeters long (about 12 inches), which may be related to the polygon features. Both Mastcam and MAHLI will image this vein.  

Beyond the workspace, but relatively closer to the rover, Mastcam will image “Loma Verde” on a small, overturned block and “Temescal Canyon,” looking at a larger expanse of bedrock with polygonal structures. Further afield, ChemCam will acquire a long-distance image at “Agua Tibia,” which is close to “Torote Bowl,” a circular feature that we have been imaging periodically since sol 4486.  

Once all the science has been gathered here in our very busy morning, we move on in a 26-meter drive (about 85 feet). We are edging closer to the “boxwork structures” — it feels like we have been saying this in every blog for a long time, but we will have “wheels on” for the first time within the next few drives. 

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NASA’s Hubble Pinpoints Roaming Massive Black Hole

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NASA’s Hubble Pinpoints Roaming Massive Black Hole

Like a scene out of a sci-fi movie, astronomers using NASA telescopes have found “Space Jaws.”

Lurking 600 million light-years away, within the inky black depths between stars, there is an invisible monster gulping down any wayward star that plummets toward it. The sneaky black hole betrayed its presence in a newly identified tidal disruption event (TDE) where a hapless star was ripped apart and swallowed in a spectacular burst of radiation. These disruption events are powerful probes of black hole physics, revealing the conditions necessary for launching jets and winds when a black hole is in the midst of consuming a star, and are seen as bright objects by telescopes.

The new TDE, called AT2024tvd, allowed astronomers to pinpoint a wandering supermassive black hole using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, with similar supporting observations from NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the NRAO Very Large Array telescope that also showed that the black hole is offset from the center of the galaxy.

The paper will be published in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Surprisingly, this one million-solar-mass black hole doesn’t reside exactly in the center of the host galaxy, where supermassive black holes are typically found, and actively gobble up surrounding material. Out of approximately 100 TDE events recorded by optical sky surveys so far, this is the first time an offset TDE has been identified. The rest are associated with the central black holes of galaxies.

In fact, at the center of the host galaxy there is a different supermassive black hole weighing 100 million times the mass of the Sun. Hubble’s optical precision shows the TDE was only 2,600 light-years from the more massive black hole at the galaxy’s center. That’s just one-tenth the distance between our Sun and the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole.

This bigger black hole spews out energy as it accretes infalling gas, and it is categorized as an active galactic nucleus. Strangely, the two supermassive black holes co-exist in the same galaxy, but are not gravitationally bound to each other as a binary pair. The smaller black hole may eventually spiral into the galaxy’s center to merge with the bigger black hole. But for now, it is too far separated to be gravitationally bound.

A TDE happens when an infalling star is stretched or “spaghettified” by a black hole’s immense gravitational tidal forces. The shredded stellar remnants are pulled into a circular orbit around the black hole. This generates shocks and outflows with high temperatures that can be seen in ultraviolet and visible light.

“AT2024tvd is the first offset TDE captured by optical sky surveys, and it opens up the entire possibility of uncovering this elusive population of wandering black holes with future sky surveys,” said lead study author Yuhan Yao of the University of California at Berkeley. “Right now, theorists haven’t given much attention to offset TDEs. “I think this discovery will motivate scientists to look for more examples of this type of event.”

A Flash in the Night

The star-snacking black hole gave itself away when several ground-based sky survey telescopes observed a flare as bright as a supernova. But unlike a supernova, astronomers know that this came from a black hole snacking on a star because the flare was very hot, and showed broad emission lines of hydrogen, helium, carbon, nitrogen, and silicon. The Zwicky Transient Facility at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory, with its 1.2-meter telescope that surveys the entire northern sky every two days, first observed the event.

“Tidal disruption events hold great promise for illuminating the presence of massive black holes that we would otherwise not be able to detect,” said Ryan Chornock, associate adjunct professor at UC Berkeley and a member of the ZTF team. “Theorists have predicted that a population of massive black holes located away from the centers of galaxies must exist, but now we can use TDEs to find them.”

The flare was seemingly offset from the center of a bright massive galaxy as cataloged by  Pan-STARRS (Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System), the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and the DESI Legacy Imaging Survey. To better determine that it was not at the galactic center, Yao’s team used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to confirm that X-rays from the flare site were also offset.

It took the resolving power of Hubble to settle any uncertainties. Hubble’s sensitivity to ultraviolet light also allows it to pinpoint the location of the TDE, which is much bluer than the rest of the galaxy.

Origin Unknown

The black hole responsible for the TDE is prowling inside the bulge of the massive galaxy. The black hole only becomes apparent every few tens of thousands of years when it “burps” from capturing a star, and then it goes quiet again until its next meal comes along.

How did the black hole get off-center? Previous theoretical studies have shown that black holes can be ejected out of the centers of galaxies because of three-body interactions, where the lowest-mass member gets kicked out. This may be the case here, given the stealthy black hole’s close proximity to the central black hole. “If the black hole went through a triple interaction with two other black holes in the galaxy’s core, it can still remain bound to the galaxy, orbiting around the central region,“ said Yao.

An alternative explanation is that the black hole is the surviving remnant of a smaller galaxy that merged with the host galaxy more than 1 billion years ago. If that is the case, the black hole might eventually spiral in to merge with the central active black hole sometime in the very far future. So at present, astronomers don’t know if it’s coming or going.

Erica Hammerstein, another UC Berkeley postdoctoral researcher, scrutinized the Hubble images as part of the study, but did not find any evidence of a past galaxy merger. But she explained, “There is already good evidence that galaxy mergers enhance TDE rates, but the presence of a second black hole in AT2024tvd’s host galaxy means that at some point in this galaxy’s past, a merger must have happened.”

Specialized for different kinds of light, observatories like Hubble and Chandra work together to pinpoint and better understand fleeting events like these. Future telescopes that will also be optimized for capturing transient events like this one include the National Science Foundation’s Vera C. Rubin Observatory and NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. They will provide more opportunities for follow-up Hubble observations to zero in on a transient’s exact location.

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The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.

ZTF is a public-private partnership, with equal support from the ZTF Partnership and from the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Related Images & Videos

Six panel illustration of Black Hole TDE AT2024tvd

This is a six-panel illustration of a tidal disruption event around a supermassive back hole.

Black Hole TDE AT2024tvd

This is a Hubble Space Telescope image of a distant galaxy that is host to the telltale signature of a roaming supermassive black hole.

Black Hole TDE AT2024tvd (Hubble + Chandra)

This is a combined Hubble Space Telescope/Chandra X-Ray Observatory image of a distant galaxy that is host to the telltale signature of a roaming supermassive black hole.

Black Hole TDE AT2024tvd Compass Image

This is a combined Hubble Space Telescope/Chandra X-Ray Observatory image of a distant galaxy that is host to the telltale signature of a roaming supermassive black hole.

Black Hole Tidal Disruption Event

This is a video animation of a tidal disruption event (TDE), an intense flash of radiation caused by the supermassive black hole eating a star. The video begins by zooming into a galaxy located 600 million light-years away.

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NASA Stennis Tool Enables Unified Collection of Test Data

Editor’s Note: The following is one of three related articles about the NASA Data Acquisition System and related efforts. Please visit Stennis News – NASA to access accompanying articles.

Just as a steady heartbeat is critical to staying alive, propulsion test data is vital to ensure engines and systems perform flawlessly.

The accuracy of the data produced during hot fire tests at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, tells the performance story.

So, when NASA needed a standardized way to collect hot fire data across test facilities, an onsite team created an adaptable software tool to do it.

“The NASA Data Acquisition System (NDAS) developed at NASA Stennis is a forward-thinking solution,” said David Carver, acting chief of the Office of Test Data and Information Management. “It has unified NASA’s rocket propulsion testing under an adaptable software suite to meet needs with room for future expansion, both within NASA and potentially beyond.”

Before NDAS, contractors conducting test projects used various proprietary tools to gather performance data, which made cross-collaboration difficult. NDAS takes a one-size-fits-all approach, providing NASA with its own system to ensure consistency.

“Test teams in the past had to develop their own software tools, but now, they can focus on propulsion testing while the NDAS team focuses on developing the software that collects data,” said Carver.

A more efficient workflow has followed since the software system is designed to work with any test hardware. It allows engineers to seamlessly work between test areas, even when upgrades have been made and hardware has changed, to support hot fire requirements for the agency and commercial customers.

With the backing and resources of the NASA Rocket Propulsion Test (RPT) Program Office, a blended team of NASA personnel and contractors began developing NDAS in 2011 as part of the agency’s move to resume control of test operations at NASA Stennis. Commercial entities had conducted the operations on NASA’s behalf for several decades.

The NASA Stennis team wrote the NDAS software code with modular components that function independently and can be updated to meet the needs of each test facility. The team used LabVIEW, a graphical platform that allows developers to build software visually rather than using traditional text-based code.

“These were very good decisions by the original team looking toward the future,” said Joe Lacher, a previous NASA project manager. “LabVIEW was a new language and is now taught in colleges and widely used in industry. Making the program modular made it adaptable.”

During propulsion tests, the NDAS system captures both high-speed and low-speed sensor data. The raw sensor data is converted into units for both real-time monitoring and post-test analysis.

During non-test operations, the system monitors the facility and test article systems to help ensure the general health and safety of the facility and personnel.

“Having quality software for instrumentation and data recording systems is critical and, in recent years, has become increasingly important,” said Tristan Mooney, NASA instrumentation engineer. “Long ago, the systems used less software, or even none at all. Amplifiers were configured with physical knobs, and data was recorded on tape or paper charts. Today, we use computers to configure, display, and store data for nearly everything.”

Developers demonstrated the new system on the A-2 Test Stand in 2014 for the J-2X engine test project.

From there, the team rolled it out on the Fred Haise Test Stand (formerly A-1), where it has been used for RS-25 engine testing since 2015. A year later, teams used NDAS on the Thad Cochran Test Stand (formerly B-2) in 2016 to support SLS (Space Launch System) Green Run testing for future Artemis missions.

One of the project goals for the system is to provide a common user experience to drive consistency across test complexes and centers.

Kris Mobbs, current NASA project manager for NDAS, said the system “really shined” during the core stage testing. “We ran 24-hour shifts, so we had people from across the test complex working on Green Run,” Mobbs said. “When the different shifts came to work, there was not a big transition needed. Using the software for troubleshooting, getting access to views, and seeing the measurements were very common activities, so the various teams did not have a lot of build-up time to support that test.”

Following success at the larger test stands, teams started using NDAS in the E Test Complex in 2017, first at the E-2 Test Stand, then on the E-1 and E-3 stands in 2020.

Growth of the project was “a little overwhelming,” Lacher recalled. The team maintained the software on active stands supporting tests, while also continuing to develop the software for other areas and their many unique requirements.

Each request for change had to be tracked, implemented into the code, tested in the lab, then deployed and validated on the test stands.

“This confluence of requirements tested my knowledge of every stand and its uniqueness,” said Lacher. “I had to understand the need, the effort to meet it, and then had to make decisions as to the priorities the team would work on first.”

Creation of the data system and its ongoing updates have transformed into opportunities for growth among the NASA Stennis teams working together.

“From a mechanical test operations perspective, NDAS has been a pretty easy system to learn,” said Derek Zacher, NASA test operations engineer. “The developers are responsive to the team’s ideas for improvement, and our experience has consistently improved with the changes that enable us to view our data in new ways.”

Originally designed to support the RPT office at NASA Stennis, the software is expanding beyond south Mississippi to other test centers, attracting interest from various NASA programs and projects, and garnering attention from government agencies that require reliable and scalable data acquisition. “It can be adopted nearly anywhere, such as aerospace and defense, research and development institutions and more places, where data acquisition systems are needed,” said Mobbs. “It is an ever-evolving solution.”

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LaToya Dean

NASA Stennis Software is Built for Future Growth

Editor’s Note: The following is one of three related articles about the NASA Data Acquisition System and related efforts. Please visit Stennis News – NASA to access accompanying articles.

A data-focused software tool created at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, continues to expand its capabilities and use across the agency.

Much like the software on a cell phone, the NASA Data Acquisition System (NDAS) software evolves with updates to meet user needs.

“It is not just because we are seeking new opportunities that we evolve,” said Kris Mobbs, NASA project manager for NDAS. “It is because the community of people using this software tell us about all the new, cool things happening and how they want to use the tool.”

Created as a standard method for collecting rocket propulsion test data, NDAS is proving to be a building block to acquire, display, and process various datasets. The flexibility of the software has supplied solutions for NASA’s work in New Mexico and Alabama and is being evaluated for data acquisition needs in Virginia.

When NASA’s White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico, needed a new data acquisition system with a flexible design, the facility reached out to NASA Stennis since the center had demonstrated success with a similar challenge.

“A major benefit for the agency is having a software platform that is agency owned and developed,” said Josh Simmons, White Sands technical upgrades lead. “Stennis is leading the way and the way the system is written and documented, other programmers can jump in, and the way they have it designed, it can continue on and that is key.”

The NASA Stennis team updated its NDAS platform based on input from White Sands personnel to make it more adaptable and to increase data acquisition rates.

“They look to understand the requirements and to develop an application that is flexible to meet everybody’s requirements,” Simmons said. “They are always willing to improve it, to make it more applicable to a wider audience.”

NDAS will be the primary data acquisition and control systems to support testing and development projects related to NASA’s Orion spacecraft.

“I would like to standardize around it here at White Sands,” said Simmons. “I want to show the worth and versatility of NDAS, so people who need it make a choice to use it.”

Meanwhile at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, NDAS is used in multiple areas for small-scale, subscale, and full-scale testing.

Devin Rios Ogle is a contractor software engineer at NASA Marshall, responsible for integrating and upgrading the data acquisition system in the testing areas. The system is used to record data on test sequences to verify they happen as intended.

“The visualization of data is really nice compared to other software I have worked with,” said Rios Ogle. “It is easier to see what data you want to see when you want to see it. You select a measurement, and you can see it in graph form, or tabular form, or however you would like. It is visually appealing and very easy to find the stuff you need.”

Rios Ogle is familiar with the database behind the system and understands what the program is trying to do. He particularly noted the modular approach built into the system, which allows users to adapt the software as needed and is a feature others would find beneficial.

Marcus Jackson, a contractor instrumentation and control engineer at NASA Marshall, echoed Ogle’s assessment of NDAS, noting that it has allowed the center to condense multiple systems into a single package that meets the team’s unique needs.

“Ultimately, NDAS provides us with an excellent software package that is built specifically for the kind of work performed here and at other test stands across the United States,” said Jackson. “It is easy to install, manage, and scale up. It doesn’t break, but if you do find a bug or issue, the NDAS team is very quick to respond and help you find a solution.”

NDAS also represents a potential solution for engineers seeking to standardize data systems at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, a use that could positively impact a mission’s ability to make data-informed decisions.

“We are investigating alternatives for standardization at all Langley facilities,” said Scott Simmons, NASA Langley data systems engineer. “Standardization has the potential for significant maintenance cost savings and efficiencies because of the sharing of the software. Having an instance of NDAS available for the dynamic data system at the 8-Foot High Temperature tunnel enables us to evaluate it as a potential solution for standardization at Langley.”

As the nation’s largest hypersonic blow-down test facility, the tunnel duplicates, as near as possible, flight conditions that would be encountered by hypersonic vehicles at up to Mach 6.5, or more than six times the speed of sound.

Even as its use grows, the NASA Stennis-led software project continues to gain momentum as it expands its capabilities and collaboration with users.

“The goal is to provide a software portfolio that supports a wide range of exciting NASA projects, involving lots of talented people that collaborate and innovate new software solutions far into the future,” Mobbs said. “This is a community of innovative, ambitious, and supportive engineers and scientists across all engineering disciplines that are dedicated to advancing NASA’s bold missions.”

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LaToya Dean