NASA Interns Blast Off for Their First Week at Goddard 

Several hundred new faces walked through the gates of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for the first time on June 3. Who is this small army of motivated space-enthusiasts? It’s Goddard’s 2024 summer intern cohort.

Across Goddard’s campuses, more than 300 on-site and virtual interns spend the 10-week program contributing across all manners of disciplines, science, engineering, finance, communications, and many more. From helping engineers who will send new space telescopes into orbit, to communicating NASA’s scientific discoveries to the world, this cohort of interns hopes to bring their new ideas and perspectives to Goddard this summer.

The Artemis Generation Takes Flight

This group of interns is part of the Artemis Generation: they come to NASA near the culmination of the campaign that will return humanity to the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years. Through Artemis, NASA will land the first woman and first person of color on the lunar surface.

“I’m just excited to contribute to Artemis,” said Kate Oberlander, who just graduated from UCLA in aerospace engineering. “We’ll be helping connect communications between the Moon and Earth for the Artemis campaign, and that is so monumental. That’s exciting to be a part of.”

In addition to work on their projects, interns also have networking opportunities where they can meet current NASA employees and learn about careers in aerospace.

“I’ve been really enjoying getting to know my fellow interns, and also getting that professional development alongside technical skills,” said Oberlander, who plans on returning to UCLA to earn her master’s degree and learn more about optics, electromagnetics, and space exploration. She said her internship this summer will bring all her favorite subjects together.

Down to Earth: Interns Work Across Fields

Interns at Goddard take on a diverse set of projects across many disciplines. “It’s a lot of learning — but I love learning. I’m like a sponge,” said Addie Colwell, an environmental science student at the University of Vermont.

Colwell’s internship focuses on stormwater management at Goddard. “We have to renovate the embankment of the stormwater pond,” Colwell said. “I’m assessing how that’s going to impact the wildlife there. It’s a lot of species identification and research.”

Emma Stefanacci, a science communication master’s student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, will be working on the astrophysics social media team.

“I’m excited to see what social media looks like, as I haven’t been able to play in that realm of communications before,” said Stefanacci. She will help develop a campaign for the launch anniversary of XRISM, a telescope collaboration between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

Working on the Next Generation of Space Discovery

Kevin Mora is a student at Arizona State University studying computer science. Mora is working on several projects this summer, one of them focusing on pipeline coding in Python to help engineers working on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. “It’s literally like a pipeline — just moving data from here to there,” Mora said. “It helps the engineers that are building Roman get stuff done faster.”

The Roman Space Telescope is the next in line to carry on the Hubble and Webb legacy. Roman will have a much wider field of view than the space telescopes preceding it, giving scientists a bigger picture of the universe, and hopefully telling us more about dark matter and dark energy. Many interns are working on this space telescope, which is expected to launch by 2027.

Alongside new faces in this year’s program, some interns are returning to NASA for repeat sessions. Cord Mazzetti, a recent electrical engineering graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, will be continuing work on quantum clock synchronization that he began researching at Goddard last summer.

“It’s nice to be back here at NASA and to be able to dive into my work even faster,” said Mazzetti.

In-person Orientation Returns to Campus

The interns’ orientation was the first to be held in-person since before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Laura Schmidt, an internships specialist in NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement.

“It was thrilling to welcome our incredible group of interns and host our first onsite summer orientation in five years,” Schmidt said. “The energy was palpable as we welcomed nearly 200 interns onsite at Goddard, and I have no doubt that the stage is set for a fantastic summer ahead.”

By Avery Truman and Matthew Kaufman

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

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Katy Mersmann

NASA Satellites Find Snow Didn’t Offset Southwest US Groundwater Loss

Record snowfall in recent years has not been enough to offset long-term drying conditions and increasing groundwater demands in the U.S. Southwest, according to a new analysis of NASA satellite data.

Declining water levels in the Great Salt Lake and Lake Mead have been testaments to a megadrought afflicting western North America since 2000. But surface water only accounts for a fraction of the Great Basin watershed that covers most of Nevada and large portions of California, Utah, and Oregon. Far more of the region’s water is underground. That has historically made it difficult to track the impact of droughts on the overall water content of the Great Basin.

A new look at 20 years of data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) series of satellites shows that the decline in groundwater in the Great Basin far exceeds stark surface water losses. Over about the past two decades, the underground water supply in the basin has fallen by 16.5 cubic miles (68.7 cubic kilometers). That’s roughly two-thirds as much water as the entire state of California uses in a year and about six times the total volume of water that was left in Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir, at the end of 2023.

While new maps show a seasonal rise in water each spring due to melting snow from higher elevations, University of Maryland earth scientist Dorothy Hall said occasional snowy winters are unlikely to stop the dramatic water level decline that’s been underway in the U.S. Southwest.

The finding came about as Hall and colleagues studied the contribution of annual snowmelt to Great Basin water levels. “In years like the 2022-23 winter, I expected that the record amount of snowfall would really help to replenish the groundwater supply,” Hall said. “But overall, the decline continued.” The research was published in March 2024 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

“A major reason for the decline is the upstream water diversion for agriculture and households,” Hall said. Populations in the states that rely on Great Basin water supplies have grown by 6% to 18% since 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. “As the population increases, so does water use.”

Runoff, increased evaporation, and water needs of plants suffering hot, dry conditions in the region are amplifying the problem. “With the ongoing threat of drought,” Hall said, “farmers downstream often can’t get enough water.”

While measurements of the water table in the Great Basin — including the depths required to connect wells to depleted aquifers — have hinted at declining groundwater, data from the joint German DLR-NASA GRACE missions provide a clearer picture of the total loss of water supply in the region. The original GRACE satellites, which flew from March 2002 to October 2017, and the successor GRACE–Follow On (GRACE–FO) satellites, which launched in May 2018 and are still active, track changes in Earth’s gravity due primarily to shifting water mass.

GRACE-based maps of fluctuating water levels have improved recently as the team has learned to parse more and finer details from the dataset. “Improved spatial resolution helped in this study to distinguish the location of the mass trends in the Western U.S. roughly ten times better than prior analyses,” said Bryant Loomis, who leads GRACE data analysis at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The diminishing water supplies of the U.S. Southwest could have consequences for both humans and wildlife, Hall said. In addition to affecting municipal water supplies and limiting agricultural irrigation, “It exposes the lake beds, which often harbor toxic minerals from agricultural runoff, waste, and anything else that ends up in the lakes.”

In Utah, a century of industrial chemicals accumulated in the Great Salt Lake, along with airborne pollutants from present-day mining and oil refinement, have settled in the water. The result is a hazardous muck that is uncovered and dried as the lake shrinks. Dust blown from dry lake beds, in turn, exacerbates air pollution in the region. Meanwhile, shrinking lakes are putting a strain on bird populations that rely on the lakes as stopovers during migration.

According to the new findings, Hall said, “The ultimate solution will have to include wiser water management.”

By James R. Riordon
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

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Slow Your Student’s ‘Summer Slide’ and Beat Boredom With NASA STEM

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Slow Your Student’s ‘Summer Slide’ and Beat Boredom With NASA STEM

The school year has come to an end, and those long summer days are stretching ahead like an open runway. Parents and educators often worry about the “summer slide,” the concept that students may lose academic ground while out of school. But summer doesn’t mean students’ imaginations have to stay grounded!

Are you hoping to slow the summer slide or simply to beat back boredom with some fun options that will also keep young minds active? NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement has pulled together this collection of hands-on activities and interesting resources to set students up for a stellar summer vacation. Read on for ways to keep students entertained and engaged, from learning about NASA’s exciting missions, to exploring the world, to making some out-of-this-world art and more.

Take NASA With You on Summer Vacation

Whether you’re whiling away the hours on a quiet summer day or setting out on a travel adventure, NASA offers fun resources for young explorers to learn while passing the time.

Prepare for air travel with the Four Forces of Flight, a set of four activities explaining the forces that make airplanes work, and NASA’s Junior Pilot Program, in which Orville the flying squirrel teaches youngsters about sustainable aviation that’s making airplanes safer and faster. Students can also learn about NASA’s X-59 experimental aircraft, which will fly faster than the speed of sound while reducing the sound of sonic booms to mere “sonic thumps,” and the whole family can sign up as virtual passengers on NASA’s upcoming flights through the NASA Flight Log.

Traveling to somewhere new? Astronauts living and working in low Earth orbit take many photographs of Earth as it rotates. Explore the world using the Explore Astronaut Photography interactive map, or test geography knowledge through the “Where in the World” Expedition I and Expedition II interactive quizzes.

Of course, some kids prefer to kick back with a good book while on the couch, at the beach, in the backseat, or on a plane – and NASA is ready with reading material! Kids aged 3 to 8 can learn about the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket that will return humans to the Moon with the “Hooray for SLS” children’s book and related activities. Students of all ages are invited to take their imaginations on a lunar adventure with fictional astronaut Callie Rodriguez through the First Woman graphic novel series.

Blast Boredom With STEM Crafts and Creativity

Making, baking, coloring, or drawing – there are plenty of ways to keep kids’ artistic abilities engaged while learning.

Students can download and create their own Artemis illustrations through Learn How to Draw Artemis, featuring the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft, and younger kids can learn the ABCs of human spaceflight with the Commercial Crew A to Z Activity and Coloring Booklet. Learn about the search for life in the universe while getting creative and colorful with Astrobiology Coloring and Drawing Pages.

If crafts are more appealing, create and launch a soda-straw rocket and use printable templates to build a model of the Orion spacecraft or the Parker Solar Probe. Kids can even create a sundial and use the Sun to tell time on a sunny day.

Finally, summer isn’t complete without a sweet treat, so bake some sunspot cookies. Real sunspots are not made of chocolate, but in this recipe, they are!

Hungry for More?

Don’t let the summer doldrums get you down. NASA STEM offers an entire universe of activities, resources, and opportunities for STEM fans at a variety of grade levels. Check out the NASA STEM Search and discover more NASA STEM categories below.

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Kaitlyn Adams

Investigating the Origins of the Crab Nebula With NASA’s Webb

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Investigating the Origins of the Crab Nebula With NASA’s Webb

New data revises our view of this unusual supernova explosion.

A team of scientists used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to parse the composition of the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant located 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus. With the telescope’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) and NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), the team gathered data that is helping to clarify the Crab Nebula’s history.

The Crab Nebula is the result of a core-collapse supernova from the death of a massive star. The supernova explosion itself was seen on Earth in 1054 CE and was bright enough to view during the daytime. The much fainter remnant observed today is an expanding shell of gas and dust, and outflowing wind powered by a pulsar, a rapidly spinning and highly magnetized neutron star.

The Crab Nebula is also highly unusual. Its atypical composition and very low explosion energy previously have been explained by an electron-capture supernova — a rare type of explosion that arises from a star with a less-evolved core made of oxygen, neon, and magnesium, rather than a more typical iron core.

“Now the Webb data widen the possible interpretations,” said Tea Temim, lead author of the study at Princeton University in New Jersey. “The composition of the gas no longer requires an electron-capture explosion, but could also be explained by a weak iron core-collapse supernova.”

Image A: Crab Nebula (NIRCam and MIRI)

Studying the Present to Understand the Past

Past research efforts have calculated the total kinetic energy of the explosion based on the quantity and velocities of the present-day ejecta. Astronomers deduced that the nature of the explosion was one of relatively low energy (less than one-tenth that of a normal supernova), and the progenitor star’s mass was in the range of eight to 10 solar masses — teetering on the thin line between stars that experience a violent supernova death and those that do not.

However, inconsistencies exist between the electron-capture supernova theory and observations of the Crab, particularly the observed rapid motion of the pulsar. In recent years, astronomers have also improved their understanding of iron core-collapse supernovae and now think that this type can also produce low-energy explosions, providing that the stellar mass is adequately low.

Webb Measurements Reconcile Historic Results

To lower the level of uncertainty surrounding the Crab’s progenitor star and nature of the explosion, the team led by Temim used Webb’s spectroscopic capabilities to hone in on two areas located within the Crab’s inner filaments.

Theories predict that because of the different chemical composition of the core in an electron-capture supernova, the nickel to iron (Ni/Fe) abundance ratio should be much higher than the ratio measured in our Sun (which contains these elements from previous generations of stars). Studies in the late 1980s and early 1990s measured the Ni/Fe ratio within the Crab using optical and near-infrared data and noted a high Ni/Fe abundance ratio that seemed to favor the electron-capture supernova scenario.

The Webb telescope, with its sensitive infrared capabilities, is now advancing Crab Nebula research. The team used MIRI’s spectroscopic abilities to measure the nickel and iron emission lines, resulting in a more reliable estimate of the Ni/Fe abundance ratio. They found that the ratio was still elevated compared to the Sun, but only modestly and much lower in comparison to prior estimates.

The revised values are consistent with electron-capture, but do not rule out an iron core-collapse explosion from a similarly low-mass star. (Higher-energy explosions from higher-mass stars are expected to produce ratios closer to solar abundances.) Further observational and theoretical work will be needed to distinguish between these two possibilities.

“At present, the spectral data from Webb covers two small regions of the Crab, so it’s important to study much more of the remnant and identify any spatial variations,” said Martin Laming of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington and a co-author of the paper. “It would be interesting to see if we could identify emission lines from other elements, like cobalt or germanium.”

Video: Crab Nebula Deconstructed

Mapping the Crab’s Current State

Besides pulling spectral data from two small regions of the Crab Nebula’s interior to measure the abundance ratio, the telescope also observed the remnant’s broader environment to understand details of the synchrotron emission and the dust distribution.

The images and data collected by MIRI enabled the team to isolate the dust emission within the Crab and map it in high resolution for the first time. By mapping the warm dust emission with Webb, and even combining it with the Herschel Space Observatory’s data on cooler dust grains, the team created a well-rounded picture of the dust distribution: The outermost filaments contain relatively warmer dust, while cooler grains are prevalent near the center.

“Where dust is seen in the Crab is interesting because it differs from other supernova remnants, like Cassiopeia A and Supernova 1987A,” said Nathan Smith of the Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona and a co-author of the paper. “In those objects, the dust is in the very center. In the Crab, the dust is found in the dense filaments of the outer shell. The Crab Nebula lives up to a tradition in astronomy: The nearest, brightest, and best-studied objects tend to be bizarre.”

These findings have been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The observations were taken as part of General Observer program 1714.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

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View/Download all image products at all resolutions for this article from the Space Telescope Science Institute.

These findings have been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Media Contacts

Laura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov, Rob Gutro – rob.gutro@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Abigail Major – amajor@stsci.edu / Christine Pulliam – cpulliam@stsci.edu
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.

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Sonification: Multiwavelength image of the Crab Nebula

Explore More: Crab Nebula resources from NASA’s Universe of Learning

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Globetrotting NASA Research Model Increases Accuracy

NASA and its international partners are using the same generically shaped wing design to create physical and digital research models to better understand how air moves around an aircraft during takeoff and landing.

Various organizations are doing computer modeling with computational tools and conducting wind tunnel tests using the same High Lift Common Research Model (CRM-HL), a NASA-led effort.

This ensures the aerospace community is getting accurate answers despite any differences in testing conditions or facilities.

What started as a voluntary partnership in 2019 has grown into the CRM-HL ecosystem with 10 partners across five countries. The team is building eight wind tunnel models, which will be tested at eight wind tunnels during the next three years.

What we are learning today would take us 10 years to do alone. The partners are using each other’s research for the mutual benefit of all.

Melissa Rivers

NASA Researcher

“What we are learning today would take us 10 years to do alone,” said Melissa Rivers, subproject manager in NASA’s Transformational Tools and Technologies project, which leads the CRM-HL research. “The partners are using each other’s research for the mutual benefit of all.”

The team will define and assess common wind tunnel conditions in more than 14 tests across the globe.

“Through this research, we are learning about differences that occur when we build and test several identical airplane models in multiple wind tunnels,” Rivers said.

Researchers can use data from these wind tunnel tests to then check if the research tools using computational fluid dynamics are accurately predicting the physics of an aircraft.

“The computer simulations and computational fluid dynamics tools are key contributions from this international partnership,” said NASA’s Mujeeb Malik, a lead researcher for the project. “The runs [tests] are critical to figuring out what we do not know and determining what we want to test.”

The partners are developing a standard way to communicate their data so that everyone can better compare the results from their models and wind tunnel tests.

NASA also is developing a cloud-based solution to give each partner access to the data and foster collaboration.

Expanding Collaborations with Common Research Models

This high lift research effort builds on the success of a previous Common Research Model effort focused on transonic speeds.

Between 2008 and 2014, many organizations built their own versions of NASA’s model. They then tested the models in tunnels around the world.

The transonic model helped the community better understand the physics of aircraft at cruise. The current high lift model focuses on the takeoff and landing portions of flight when the aircraft is flying slower than at cruise.

Since there are more wind tunnels that can run low-speed tests, more partners can participate in the current collaboration.

The partners working on the CRM-HL span five countries – United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Japan and include:

• NASA
• German Aerospace Center
• National Office for Aerospace Studies and Research, the French Aerospace Lab
• JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency)
• European Transonic Wind Tunnel
• Aerospace Technology Institute
• Boeing
• Kawasaki Heavy Industries
• QinetiQ
• Airbus

Informing Community Initiatives

Data from the CRM-HL research effort also are driving NASA’s High Lift Prediction Workshop series. The series is sponsored by the Applied Aerodynamics Technical Committee of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

The workshops are intended to engage the broader aviation community in these efforts and inspire researchers around the world.

Another goal of this research is to help realize Certification by Analysis, which supports key objectives of the NASA Computational Fluid Dynamics Vision 2030 Study.

NASA, industry, and academia developed the study to lay out a long-term plan for developing future computational capabilities and meeting software and hardware needs for computational fluid dynamics.

The aerospace community will require these resources to efficiently makeaccurate predictions of how air moves around an aircraft. This work also informs the analysis and design of aircraft.

Certification by Analysis would significantly reduce the amount of flight tests required for an aircraft or engine to meet the requirements for airworthiness.

This could save aircraft development programs time and millions of dollars. It could also improve product safety and performance.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) sets the requirements for airworthiness. Companies must provide test results to show new aircraft and engines meet the regulations.

“Before the FAA would allow this type of certification, the analysis must be as accurate as flight testing,” said Rivers.

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