2024 NASA interns

[Background music. Image of NZ Space Agency logo. Video of narrator facing the camera with caption including image of NZ Space Scholarship patch and text reading: 'Narottam Royal NZ Space Scholarship recipient'.]

My name is Narottam, I study at the University of Canterbury. I'm in the electrical and computer engineering department. And my area of research is determining the orientation of a rocket using antennas.

[Video of hills and JPL sign; high speed video of people walking in front of building.]

At JPL I'll be looking at Deep Space Network data and trying to figure out anomalies in the data.

[Video of narrator facing the camera.]

The deep space network consists of several satellite dishes all around the globe.

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While I'm over there, I'll be looking through all the data from these systems and trying to figure out when things go wrong, where they're going wrong so that they can be maintained.

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And JPL works on so many amazing missions that I've been following and interested in over the years.

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So looking forward to the whole thing really.

[Image of NZ Space Agency logo; Cuts to image of MBIE and New Zealand Government logos. Music ends.]

[Audio/visual: Background music plays. Image of NZ Space Agency logo. Video of narrator facing the camera with caption including image of NZ Space Scholarship patch and text reading: 'Tait Francis NZ Space Scholarship recipient'.]

My name is Tait and I'm studying a PhD in chemistry at the University of Otago. I'm in my third and hopefully final year.

[Visual: Video of entrance to NASA JPL facility; narrator facing the camera; people walking in front of building.]

My project at NASA is just going to be an extension of the PhD work that I'm already doing here in Dunedin, where I'm looking at the composition of ice particles in the atmosphere of Titan, which is Saturn's largest moon.

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I'm looking to investigate how biological molecules might have formed on the prehistoric Earth.

[Visual: Video of people seated around an office table; people working in a lab environment; narrator facing the camera.]

At NASA, I'm really looking forward to being able to use the cutting edge equipment that they have there to really cut to the heart of the research questions I'm looking at.

[Audio/visual: Image of NZ Space Agency logo; Cuts to image of MBIE and New Zealand Government logos. Background music ends.]

[Audio/visual: Background music plays. Video of narrator facing the camera with caption including image of NZ Space Scholarship patch and caption reading: 'Axl Rogers, NZ Space Scholarship recipient'. The narrator is facing the camera.]

My name is Axl Rogers. I'm a PhD candidate in radio astronomy and astrophysics at the Auckland University of Technology.

[Visual: Video of entrance to NASA JPL facility; cars entering facility; video of interior of JPL control room with computer screens.]

My NASA project is called 'delta differential one way ranging'.

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It's basically a fancy word for a big space phone, a way for us to communicate to spacecraft in deep space and making sure that they're healthy and safe.

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I'm looking forward to meeting and working with some of the greatest minds in the field and areas of expertise, working with state of the art technology and instrumentation and learning more about deep space and hopefully, helping New Zealand join the Deep Space Network in the future.

[Audio/visual: Image of NZ Space Agency logo; Cuts to image of MBIE and New Zealand Government logos. Background music ends.]

[Audio/visual: Background music plays. Image of NZ Space Agency logo. Video of narrator facing the camera with caption including image of NZ Space Scholarship patch and text reading: 'Grace Jacobs Corban NZ Space Scholarship recipient'.]

I'm Grace. I'm a student at Victoria University of Wellington. I've just finished studying a Masters of Science in society. And I'm going to be starting a PhD in maths education. And I'm really interested in science communication and making science accessible and fun for everybody.

[Visual: Video of people seated around an office table; narrator facing the camera; children looking at model antenna; person in front of video of a rocket separation; children and adults watching robot.]

So at NASA I'm going to be part of JPL's exoplanet exploration team. I'm going to be working on doing some science communication with them and making some of their science resources accessible and usable for school students.

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I'm really looking forward to meeting lots of cool new people, seeing how they do work there and how they approach science communication at NASA, because they do a lot of amazing outreach so I'm looking forward to getting a bit more insight into that.

[Audio/visual: Image of NZ Space Agency logo; Cuts to image of MBIE and New Zealand Government logos. Background music ends.]

[Audio/visual: Background music plays. Image of NZ Space Agency logo. Video of narrator facing the camera with caption including image of NZ Space Scholarship patch and text reading: 'Faun Watson NZ Space Scholarship recipient'.]

My name is Faun Watson. I'm studying for a PhD at Victoria University in physics focusing on building deployables for satellites to take down dead or old satellites in a sustainable and affordable way.

[Visual: Video of people seated around an office table; narrator facing the camera.]

In my time at Ames, I will be working with the aerothermodynamics division, which looks at the interaction between spacecraft and the atmosphere upon reentry. Specifically, I'm going to be using some software NASA has developed and integrating it with the results from their shock tube which is a sort of like a wind tunnel for these re-entry conditions.

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I think I'm really looking forward to the connections I'm going to make overseas and hoping to maintain some of these for when we return and hopefully spread these to the greater New Zealand space community for future collaborations.

[Audio/visual: Image of NZ Space Agency logo; Cuts to image of MBIE and New Zealand Government logos. Background music ends.]

[Audio/visual: Background music plays. Image of NZ Space Agency logo. Video of narrator facing the camera with caption including image of NZ Space Scholarship patch and text reading: 'Alexandra McKendry NZ Space Scholarship recipient'.]

I'm Alex and I'm a mechanical engineering PhD student at the University of Canterbury. And I'm studying neuromorphic computation.

[Visual: Video of people seated around an office table; narrator facing the camera.]

Neuromorphic computing is a alternative computing paradigm which is inspired by how computation works in the brain.

I'm going to be working at NASA Ames Research Center in the autonomy and robotics division on a neuromorphic co-processor for autonomous flight capabilities. I'm looking forward to being exposed to cutting edge technology and research. Coming from New Zealand it's going be

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really exciting to see what's possible, and hopefully bring some of that knowledge back to New Zealand.

[Audio/visual: Image of NZ Space Agency logo; Cuts to image of MBIE and New Zealand Government logos. Background music ends.]