To say that I am already done with this internship is unbelievable. This final week was by far the most eventful to me, from being a part of the assembly of SPRITE to finishing my CubeSat Wavelength Calibration project. I’m happy to say that I had an amazing experience and learned much from this internship.
I spent the first few days this week working on my project. This included writing the final aspects of my script, debugging errors, and ensuring the accuracy of the wavelength calibration. This took up a lot of my time, but it allowed me to finish my project before heading back home. Midweek, the other interns and I continued to help in the cleanroom assembling SPRITE. It was amazing to be able to see the satellite that has been in pieces all around the lab finally turning into a CubeSat as a result of everyone’s collaboration. Our specific work involved installing the “brain” of SPRITE and lining it up for its future tests in the upcoming weeks (Image 1). As always, this was a very stressful procedure because if anything went wrong, it could break the component and cause months of catch-up. Thankfully, with a lot of training, allowed us to feel comfortable working or even observing the assembly. This process will take up to a few weeks, outlasting the duration of my internship, but to see a milestone in this mission and what has been just components, scripts, and ideas finally become something was rewarding.
The week came to an end with my script successfully calibrating wavelengths of FITS images, therefore completing my project. Although I am not done working at LASP, I will continue with them managing their social media, posting SPRITE and future missions, sharing their research, reaching large audiences, and showing the incredible work that SPRITE and their future missions are doing. Not only is this a great work opportunity, but will enable me to stay up to date on the lab and astrophysics in general, and continue to learn long into the future.
In the end, I am so appreciative of Pinhead and Dmitry (my mentor), along with the entire LASP team, for making this internship possible and to my host family for having an open house whenever Patrick and I needed it. I look forward to what lies ahead and hope that I can use the connections and knowledge I gained going forward. Again, thank you so much to you all, and I look forward to sharing my experience at the presentations.
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