Last year, Liberty University senior Matthew Russell sat down at the computer and Googled “How to get an internship at NASA.”
Months later, that Google search was a reality. Out of 13,509 applicants, Russell, along with Liberty University junior Madison Melton, became two of the 1,966 students nationwide to land an internship, according to NASA Public Affairs Officer Katherine Brown.
Russell started work at the Johnson Space Center in Houston this past summer, while a paperwork snafu meant Melton didn’t start at the Kennedy Space Center in Titusville, Florida, until the fall. Though they worked on vastly different projects and had completely different experiences, the students had one thing in common: They got to meet astronauts.
“I think I’ve met a total of three,” Melton said in a phone interview, since she’s still finishing up her internship in Florida. She called the experience “humbling.”
“You’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re so cool. You’ve been into space!’” she said. “And then they’ll tell you all about their mission and they’re always in their blue astronaut suit. That was really cool. They have a lot of astronauts that come around here. It’s not very odd.”
Russell got to meet Elena Ochoa, a former astronaut who directs the Johnson Space Center. He also met some of the Apollo-era flight commanders. He and a group of other Christian interns who were living together in Houston even had a Christian astronaut come speak to them as well.
“It was a really neat opportunity,” he said in an interview in the Jerry Falwell Library earlier this month.
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Russell was in Houston working on a project for the Orion program, which aims to get Americans back to the moon and ultimately Mars. It’s in its early stages now, with the first manned flight to orbit the moon planned for 2021, he said.
“The particular part that we were working on was the flight management code,” Russell explained.
That code controls when different things happen inside the spacecraft. Russell actually worked to strip down the code into a simpler version that could be used for an important test on the computers that would eventually go into the space craft.
They needed to shake up the computers, literally, he said.
To make sure the computers could withstand the stress they would experience, they underwent vibration testing. As the computer was vibrated, Russell monitored the inputs and outputs of his software. If they matched, the computer was still functioning correctly.
“It did survive all the tests,” he said.
Russell said it was exciting to have a part, even a small one, in sending Americans back to the moon, and he appreciated that he was doing something hands-on and real, instead of the busy work or coffee runs that sometimes come with internships at large organizations.
Brown said that’s by design.
She described the NASA internships as educational opportunities in an email. Ultimately, she wrote, they create “the nation’s next generation workforce needed to enable future NASA discoveries.”
Also exciting for Russell were the ways he found a home away from home in Houston. Because there are so many interns at the Johnson Space Center — about 200, by Russell’s count — it was easy for him to find housing with other interns, and specifically fellow Christians.
“Every Tuesday night, we had Bible study, which is really important to me and really encouraging to see not just a community of NASA engineers that are really good at what they do and really enjoy that, but at the same time they’re also Christians and they’re also seeking to understand how that affects their work as well.”
Even though some people might see a divide between Christianity and science, especially the science of space, Russell said he’s thought a lot about how his faith actually ties into what he worked on over the summer.
“I think that a lot of Christians will look at science and they will think that anything that comes out of science or anything that a scientist says, if that’s coming from a naturalistic background, then it has to be ignored. They can’t integrate that well,” he said. “I don’t think that’s true. I think that if we’re just looking at the actual observations that we see in the universe and some of the conclusions we can draw from that, I don’t feel like there’s a disconnect.”
The idea of a “big bang” as the origin of the universe, for instance, has scientific backing, he said. Some Christians reject the idea because they think it means God couldn’t have created the universe. Russell doesn’t agree.
“I think a lot of Christians don’t realize that that same thing that leads scientists to think there must be a big bang also indicates that at some point there must have been a beginning. … Something had to happen,” he said.
His explanation for that is God.
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For junior Madison Melton, faith has also played a role in her job with NASA. Her mentor, who she has been in contact with since she first applied to the program two years ago, is a Christian, and they have bonded over their faith. He also has been supportive and helpful enough to make Melton’s transition into working at NASA seamless.
Still, it can feel surreal.
“I never thought that I would be 18 and having an internship at NASA. That is beyond belief,” she said.
Because she had so many course credits from high school, Melton is younger than most juniors. When she started at Liberty, she was already a sophomore in the electrical engineering program.
The internship was a long time coming. She originally applied to work at NASA during the summer of 2016, but didn’t get an offer. She applied again, and got an offer for last summer, but the paperwork didn’t go through. Her professors encouraged her to pursue the internship this fall, which she was apprehensive about. She’s working and going to school full time.
But balancing the two is “not too bad,” Melton said. “I love being here. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”
Unlike Russell, Melton isn’t anticipating a far-off mission. Instead, she sees rockets launch on a regular basis for her job.
At Kennedy, rockets launch everything from weather monitoring tools to satellites that expand cable television access. Melton’s job is to monitor data coming off the rocket as it prepares to launch. She calls it watching the data “flow.” This data can include status updates, voltages and amp readings. And Melton loves every second.
“I love just being there when it launches,” she said. “You get to go outside and watch it launch from even a mile away, and that was so powerful, and I just loved to watch that. You get to feel all of the vibrations from the loud power that the rocket was putting off, and it’s very moving.”
One of Melton’s biggest hopes is that more women can have experiences like hers. Right now at NASA, “there are a lot of men,” she said. But there’s a growing population of women, and women engineers are respected.
“I just really want to say that girls are really needed in the engineering field, and don’t ever get put down because you’re a girl,” she said. “I know in the engineering field there’s a lot more guys, but girls are definitely needed in this field. Don’t ever not believe in yourself. You can do anything you want to do.”
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