Academic Semester Legal Externships (HQ)

Externships with NASA Headquarters Office of the General Counsel

NASA’s Office of the General Counsel (OGC) periodically has externships for highly qualified law students. OGC offers unpaid, part-time and full-time externships during the law school academic year (for law school credit). These externships are intended to expose law students to the rewards of Federal service and to facilitate their professional growth. Externships may be performed either in person or remotely (depending on NASA COVID-19 safety protocols).

OGC is divided into four practice groups: Commercial and Intellectual Property; General Law; Contracts and Acquisition Integrity; and International and Space Law. Detailed, descriptive information about each practice group is located on OGC’s main page. NASA OGC will be soliciting applications for Summer 2025 shortly.

Qualifications

You must be a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident and enrolled (full-time or part-time) in a U.S. law school that is ABA-accredited, in either a J.D. or LL.M program. In addition, you must have at least a 3.0 GPA.

Application Process

To apply for an academic semester internship (part-time or full-time) for law school credit:

Please apply by email to: hq-ogcintern@mail.nasa.gov. With your email, please include solely the following materials in a single PDF:

• A one-page cover letter explaining: (1) to which of the OGC practice groups you are applying; (2) your interest in the position; and (3) your qualifications for the position; and
• A resume of no more than two pages.

Due to the volume of applications received, applicants will receive a general acknowledgement that their resume has been received and will be contacted personally only if selected for an interview.

We are not accepting applications for the Externship Program at this time. NASA OGC will be soliciting applications for Summer 2025 shortly.

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NASA

NASA Selects Companies for Commercial SmallSat Services Award

NASA has selected eight companies for a new award to help acquire Earth observation data and provide related services for the agency.

The Commercial SmallSat Data Acquisition Program On-Ramp1 Multiple Award contract is a firm-fixed-price indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity multiple-award contract with a maximum value of $476 million, cumulatively amongst all the selected contractors, and a performance period through Nov. 15, 2028.

The selectees are:

• BlackSky Geospatial Solutions, Inc. in Herndon, Virginia
• ICEYE US Inc. in Irvine, California
• MDA Geospatial Service Inc. in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada
• Pixxel Space Technologies, Inc in El Segundo, California
• Planet Labs Federal, Inc. in Arlington, Virginia
• Satellogic Federal, LLC in Davidson, North Carolina
• Teledyne Brown Engineering, Inc. in Huntsville, Alabama
• The Tomorrow Companies Inc. in Boston

Under the contract, the recipients will be responsible for acquiring observation data from commercial sources that support NASA’s Earth science research and application activities that help improve life on the planet. The goal of the awards is to give NASA a cost-effective way to augment or complement the Earth observations acquired by the agency and other U.S. government and international agencies for the benefit of all.

For information about NASA and agency programs, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov

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Tiernan Doyle
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
tiernan.doyle@nasa.gov

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Tiernan P. Doyle

NASA to Take Part in Hidden Figures Congressional Gold Medal Ceremony

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson will represent the agency during a Congressional Gold Medal ceremony at 3 p.m. EDT Wednesday, Sept. 18, recognizing the women who contributed to the space race, including the NASA mathematicians who helped land the first astronauts on the Moon under the agency’s Apollo Program.

Hosted by House Speaker Mike Johnson, the Congressional Gold Medal Ceremony will take place inside Emancipation Hall at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. Nelson is expected to be among the speakers.

The event will stream live on the speaker’s YouTube channel. The agency will share a direct link on this advisory in advance of the event.

Media without current congressional credentials on the Hill interested in participating in the event must RSVP by Sept. 13, to Abby Ronson at: abby.ronson@mail.house.gov.

Medal Information

Introduced by Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson on Feb. 27, 2019, H.R.1396 – Hidden Figures Congressional Gold Medal Act – was signed into law later that year. Awards will include:

• Congressional Gold Medal to Katherine Johnson, in recognition of her service to the United States as a mathematician
• Congressional Gold Medal to Dr. Christine Darden, for her service to the United States as an aeronautical engineer
• Congressional Gold Medals in commemoration of the lives of Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, in recognition of their service to the United States during the space race
• Congressional Gold Medal in recognition of all the women who served as computers, mathematicians, and engineers at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and NASA between the 1930s and the 1970s.

For more information about NASA missions, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov

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Meira Bernstein / Cheryl Warner
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
meira.b.bernstein@nasa.gov / cheryl.m.warner@nasa.gov

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Abbey A. Donaldson

NASA Scientific Balloon Takes Flight With Student-Built Payloads

NASA’s Scientific Balloon Program’s fifth balloon mission of the 2024 fall campaign took flight Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024, from the agency’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. The HASP 1.0 (High-Altitude Student Platform) mission remained in flight over 11 hours before it safely touched down. Recovery is underway.

HASP is a partnership among the Louisiana Space Grant Consortium, the Astrophysics Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, and the agency’s Balloon Program Office and Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility. The HASP platform supports up to 12 student-built payloads and is designed to flight test compact satellites, prototypes, and other small experiments. Since 2006, HASP has engaged more than 1,600 undergraduate and graduate students involved in the missions.

Teams participating in the 2024 HASP 1.0 flight included: University of North Florida and University of North Dakota; Arizona State University; Louisiana State University; University of Colorado Boulder; College of the Canyons; Fort Lewis College; Capitol Technical College; University of Arizona; Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería (Peru); and McMaster University (Canada).

A new, larger version of the High-Altitude Student Platform (HASP 2.0) had its engineering test flight a few days prior. HASP 2.0 will be able to accommodate twice as many student experiments as HASP 1.0 once operational in the next year.

The remaining three balloon flights scheduled for the 2024 Fort Sumner fall campaign await next launch opportunities. To follow the missions, visit NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility website for real-time updates on balloons altitudes and GPS locations during flight.

For more information on NASA’s Scientific Balloon Program, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/scientificballoons

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Olivia F. Littleton

NASA Sets Coverage for Crew Launch; Trio to Join Expedition 71

NASA astronaut Don Pettit will launch aboard the Roscosmos Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft, accompanied by cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner, to the International Space Station where they will join the Expedition 71 crew in advancing scientific research.

Pettit, Ovchinin, and Vagner will lift off at 12:23 p.m. EDT Wednesday, Sept. 11 (9:23 p.m. Baikonur time) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Coverage will stream on NASA+, the NASA app, and the agency’s website. Learn how to stream NASA content through a variety of platforms including social media.

After a two-orbit, three-hour trajectory to the station, the spacecraft will automatically dock at 3:33 p.m. at the orbiting laboratory’s Rassvet module. Shortly after, hatches will open between the spacecraft and the station.

Once aboard, the trio will join NASA astronauts Tracy C. Dyson, Mike Barratt, Matthew Dominick, Jeanette Epps, Butch Wilmore, and Suni Williams, as well as Roscosmos cosmonauts Nikolai Chub, Alexander Grebenkin, and Oleg Kononenko.

NASA’s coverage is as follows (all times Eastern and subject to change based on real-time operations):

11:15 a.m. – Launch coverage begins on NASA+, the NASA app, YouTube, and the agency’s website.

12:23 p.m. – Launch

2:30 p.m. – Rendezvous and docking coverage begins on NASA+, the NASA app, YouTube, and the agency’s website.

3:33 p.m. – Docking

5:30 p.m. – Hatch opening and welcome remarks coverage begins on NASA+, the NASA app, YouTube, and the agency’s website.

5:50 p.m. – Hatch opening

The trio will spend approximately six months aboard the orbital laboratory as Expedition 71 and 72 crew members before returning to Earth in the spring of 2025. This will be the fourth spaceflight for Pettit and Ovchinin, and the second for Vagner.

For more than two decades, people have lived and worked continuously aboard the International Space Station, advancing scientific knowledge, and making research breakthroughs that are not possible on Earth. The station is a critical testbed for NASA to understand and overcome the challenges of long-duration spaceflight and to expand commercial opportunities in low Earth orbit. As commercial companies focus on providing human space transportation services and destinations as part of a robust low Earth orbit economy, NASA is focusing more resources on deep space missions to the Moon as part of Artemis in preparation for future human missions to Mars.

Learn more about International Space Station research and operations at:

https://www.nasa.gov/station

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Joshua Finch / Claire O’Shea
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov / claire.a.o’shea@nasa.gov

Sandra Jones
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
sandra.p.jones@nasa.gov

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Tiernan P. Doyle