Interning at NASA
December 10th, 2021 by Lillian Tso
Interning at NASA
December 10, 2021
Four days before I would be whisked across the globe to study abroad in Metz, France, I got the call: I was going to be interning at NASA! It was my dream come true! Immediately, I stared packing and started the five day journey from Pheonix, AZ— where I just finished up my summer internship with Northrop Grumman Space— to Mountain View, CA— the location of NASA Ames Research Center— where I would start working the following Monday. I was an Aeromechanics Intern specializing in rotorcrafts, eVTOLs, and planetary helicopters!
During my internship, I was able to work with so many different mentors at NASA Ames on a multitude of different projects. One of my main projects was called RABBIT: RApid Blade and Blade vortex InTeraction. The purpose of this project was to simulate helicopter blade and blade vortex interactions (called BVI) which result in major acoustics in helicopters. It’s the primary driving force behind why helicopters are so loud: all helicopter blades produce vortexes which are then hit by other blades when they are spinning around.
I helped write a MATLAB script which simulated BVI on helicopter blades. I also created a Graphical User Interface (GUI) in which people can input their own rotorcraft parameters and evaluate the acoustics associated with the design. Overall, it was a really cool project that allowed me to learn more about acoustics, aerodynamics, and MATLAB. This project really stretched my coding abilities in order to make the code more efficient, quicker, and perform to my standards.
Image Courtesy of NASA
I was also able to help wind tunnel testing of a rotorcraft model. There was a physical model that was built and placed inside the wind tunnel. Before every test, we had to configure the rotors to the correct spacing, torque all of the bolts down, torque stripe all of the bolts, and check the temperature of all of the motors. We also had to perform a RAP (resonance assessment profile) test for every configuration. I was able to lead the last test on behalf of my test team! Once we did that, we started up the wind tunnel and started collecting data at different collective pitches and angles of attacks. The entire model was controlled via a series of joysticks almost like a video game controller. To collect the last couple of data points, I was able to operate the model even as an intern!
The last project that I was able to work on was working on the next generation Mars Science Helicopter. I was designing a trade study on conceptual designs for a gimbal to rotate the solar panel on the helicopter. I also had to determine if tilting the solar panel was worth the extra weight and complexity that it would add. It was really cool to work on a system that is potentially going to Mars.
Overall, I loved my experience as a NASA intern. I was able to control what projects I wanted to work on and what skills I wanted to develop which I thought was very unique. Over the summer semester, the branch usually hires over 70 interns, which is double the number of full time civil servants in the branch. I went over the Fall semester, so there were 5 interns. As a result, we received more mentorship than other semesters (I was able to work with more than ten mentors during my internship). The civil servants working at NASA were all amazing people who wanted all the interns to succeed. They also love to pull pranks on one another and have daily “Happy Day” emails that get sent out by the Branch Director. However, with all good experiences, there are some bad ones that should be addressed. The first is living in California with a NASA salary. I received a stipend for my work at NASA from the Georgia Space Grant Consortium. Because the cost of living in California is very high, I ended the semester broke even. I did not end up with any extra money. Most of that was from living at the NASA lodge: a guest housing complex on Moffett Federal Airfield. The facilities at this housing complex are subpar: there is a single kitchen per fifty guests, a dilapidated laundry room in a marked for demolition building, and cockroaches galore. My roommate and I were the only two living in this complex for a couple of weeks until a single guest would move in for a couple of days.
All of these issues were very minor compared to my overall experiences. I was able to work on some of the coolest projects in the world, and I can say now that I have worked at NASA and on a Mars project!
The NASA Ames Sign
