Looking back on a summer at NASA Marshall
Control-room work, ISS command-system training and a seat on NASA Headquarters' intern roundtable on agency strategy: Raby reflects on his Marshall internship.
At the top of every hill, I get a better view of the mountain ahead.
During this summer's internship as a NASA Systems Engineering and Project Management intern at Marshall Space Flight Center (HP27), I was able to work on interesting projects and get to know great people — fellow interns and civil servants. A huge thanks to the entire HP team for a stellar example of effective leadership in a technical environment.
I was honored to be the only undergraduate intern from Marshall selected to serve on the NASA Headquarters Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy (OTPS) Intern Roundtable, with interns from NASA centers around the country, considering issues pertinent to the agency's long-term strategy.
My projects focused on renovating a configurable control room with the capabilities future NASA missions will need; learning command systems to create training materials for future civil servants, while looking for areas of improvement; and researching technologies to integrate with the Huntsville Operations Support Center (HOSC), supporting its projects, process development and technology integration.
Seeing how many people it takes on the ground to support our missions in space gives you a fresh perspective on what operational excellence requires. I also had the chance to train on the job in the control room with a Payload Operations Director, learning from the cadre how to solve real-time off-nominal issues aboard the ISS after studying them in Space Ops Academy.
