07 Jun Alex Birck, LASP, Week 1

Hey everyone! My name is Alex Birck, and I was lucky enough to get my Pinternship at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder, Colorado. I’m interning with Isaias Gutierrez, and am working with Dmitry Vorobiev and Briana Indhal, along with many undergraduate and graduate students here.

Isaias and I working on the CubeSat burn wire mechanism.

My first week at LASP was very exciting. Within just the first day, we got to tour the whole lab, sit in on a meeting, and even got to go into the cleanroom with SPRITE (cubesat)! The rest of the week was filled with paperwork, training, getting our keycards, and project work! The training covered ESD procedures for grounding and handling sensitive components, cleanroom protocols for gowning, equipment cleaning, and maintaining cleanliness, and chemical safety protocols for SDS review, chemical-resistant PPE, fume hood operation, and hazardous waste disposal. After basic training, we began working on a practice deployment contraption for a CubeSat burn wire mechanism. This burns a nylon string that holds the solar panels closed during launch, and an electrical current melts the string, allowing spring-loaded hinges to open the panels. Because this nylon string must be hand-tied and is super delicate, the team uses the rig to practice the tying technique without the risk of damaging the flight hardware. On Friday, we started working on a Camera/UV system to analyze asteroid samples using UV light.

Dmitry, Briana, and Alex Sico working on SPRITE in the cleanroom.

Just for a quick breakdown, the SPRITE CubeSat is a shoe-box-sized orbital telescope designed to decipher how our universe chemically evolved. By capturing high-energy far-ultraviolet light, it analyzes how massive stars and exploding supernovae blast heavy elements back into their parent galaxies.

Aside from our “normal” work, we started attending a program called ASTRO Academy. The ASTRO Academy is a super cool summer program at Boulder that takes classroom science and plugs it into real space missions at LASP. It makes it easy to learn about things like building space hardware, engineering, and working with awesome people on team-building projects.

Taco Night!!!

Pearl Street!

Outside of LASP, we have been settling into our new home, which has been provided by our wonderful host family. Throughout the week, we have been making all of our meals, from having 2o yogurts in the fridge, to making Tacos! Friday night, we walked around Pearl Street and got a feel for the community during the beautiful and peaceful night! Lastly, we went to the NSF NCAR Mesa Laboratory (Visitors Center) today to check out the cool weather displays and just soak in those killer views of the Flatirons from the outdoor deck. Overall, my first week interning at LASP was incredibly fun since I quickly knocked out all the onboarding paperwork and immediately hopped right into actual project work. Instead of spending days just doing tech setup, I got to dive straight into learning about their epic space missions alongside the engineers. I honestly cannot wait to start working on more of the awesome projects they have in store for us next week.