We were online because of COVID, so I asked the other students to photoshop themselves into a "group photo" with me! We had a lot of fun making this.
I'm the girl all the way to the left! :P
My REU at MIT Haystack Observatory
August 28th, 2021
Every year, MIT Haystack Observatory invites 11 - 13 undergraduate students with an interest in aerospace engineering, computer science, astrophysics, astronomy, geospace science, radio science, and related fields to apply for their paid summer research experience. "[Haystack's] REU program has been held for decades, and we have seen many of our student interns go on to rewarding careers in STEM research."
I was lucky enough to be one of the 12 undergraduate students who were invited to join Haystack for the summer! I was placed in my top choice project: AERO-VISTA, where I was working under Dr. Mary Knapp, Dr. John Swoboda, Dr. Ryan Volz, and Dr. Frank Lind.
AERO-VISTA is "a small satellite mission led by Haystack, scheduled for launch in 2022, which will test a novel 'Vector Sensor' radio capable of sampling low radio frequencies from orbit in the Earth’s auroral zones".
Working on AERO-VISTA was a dream come true! I was working alongside some of the brightest students in aerospace and world-famous research scientists from MIT. And I was
writing mission-critical software for an aerospace mission! I couldn't believe it!
My project involved writing an API for AERO-VISTA mission that processes and serializes commands with instance-specific data and metadata and uplinks this to the spacecraft while the satellites are in orbit in near-earth space. And multiple days every week, I attended meetings and lectures from MIT aerospace and radio science researchers who are working with the Event Horizon Telescope, MOXIE, AERO-VISTA CubeSats, etc. to learn about black hole physics, radio and radar technology, geodesy, and more.
I was starstruck (pun intended) and busy.
By the end of the REU, I had developed a working version of the API from scratch, submitted a report about my work to the National Science Foundation, created a great group of friends, and found two incredibly accomplished researchers who have expressed that they will go out of their way to help me with my career in aerospace research.
I'm reaching for the stars! And I cannot wait to see how far I will go.