Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Houston, we have an intern.

Howdy, y'all. Murr here, reporting in from the NASA's Johnson Space Center, the home of human Space Flight. You'd think that after two and a half weeks of this internship I'd be used to the fact I work at NASA, but I swear to Space Cat, I have to pinch myself everyday.



I am working in the Communications Office for the International Space Station Program. The team I'm on handles a ton of different things: editing footage downlinked from Station, putting together media packages and videos for crew members to take on speaking tours when they return from space, coordinating guests for launches at Wallops Island and Kennedy Space Center, as well as planning the pre- and post-launch events and communications plans. They liaise with the international partners (ESA, CSA, JAXA, and Roscosmos), order promotional materials for outreach events, travel internationally for launches and to promote ISS abroad. There's even a guy who's job it is to wine and dine outside media companies- like, Hollywood companies. This group has worked with National Geographic, Discover Channel, and Time magazine to create movies and miniseries and so much more. And that doesn't even touch a lot of the internal comms they do, taking all the science and engineer speak and making it digestible for others, putting together newletters, filming crew messages or other videos for NASA or space camp or whatever. It's like drinking from a fire hose trying to take it all in.

ISS Communications is housed on the 5th floor of building 4S, one floor below the astronauts. (Astronaut Candidates, those who are in training, are called AsCans, a shortening I find to be truly unfortunate.) It's not uncommon to run into a cosmonaut in the elevator or an astronaut in the lobby. On my first day, Don Pettit held the door open for me and chatted with my boss. Two days ago I nearly walked straight into Mark Hopkins, he was wearing his flight suit an and I got a little star struck. Yesterday I got called into a video shoot and was introduced to Kate Rubins who is amazing, gracious, funny, and nailed her shoot in 3 takes. THEN, it turns out Scott Tingle is working on his video package with one of the guys on my team and he's been wandering in and out of our office all week. It might sound as if I'm bragging, but its just so surreal- these people were in SPACE. Like...space space. In the sky.


My mentor is a wonderful, laid back guy who has basically given me carte blanche to get involved in as many projects as I want and I've made it my mission this summer to say yes to everything. I was off to a slow start early on since my computer was brand new and missing all the vital software, but its finally all there and now I can really dig deep. I've taken over the compiling and design of the 2019 International Space Station calendar. December 2018 will be the 20th anniversary of the first  elements of the station being launched into orbit, so I've gotten to do a write up on that as well as dig up photos of ISS in its infancy. I also get to decide what the photos will be for each month which means I am getting paid to sift through thousands of photos in the JSC archive everyday. Its truly astonishing. There are photos from the early space program, like Apollo and Gemini, to AsCan training photos to photos from the previous day on ISS. One of my favorite things to do every day is to log in and see what the crew has been up to while on orbit. Last week Drew Feustel and Ricky Arnold performed a 6 hr 45 minute space walk and the photos that came down the next day were absolutely incredible. This also means I get awesome pics for my desktop wall paper.




I'm also working on creating the Pre-Launch Communications Plan for next week's SpaceX resupply launch. It highlights what's going up to station (food and other supplies and a whole lot of science) and what's coming down (some finished experiments) and makes sure everybody representing NASA has the same info and is sharing the same message. This project is a bit daunting because its a quick turn around, is being distributed to a lot of important folks, and requires me to condense a ton of huge documents into one medium sized one with the most relevant info. But it's very cool.

The last thing I'm working on is really neat, and very big picture comms strategy. My mentor and another guy in our office have been tasked with developing a Center-wide communications plan to train supervisors how to create an inclusive and diverse work force. This an issue that I'm very passionate about, as a woman worker, and especially as the only woman on my team, so I'm very excited I've been asked to contribute. Right now we're still working with the senior management to craft the message  but soon this will be implemented and will start having an impact on the work force. I am really very fortunate to be able to work on this project, partially because it's a huge challenge to create a message and then work it through all the bureaucratic channels, but also because its something that will have a lasting impact on Johnson, and hopefully NASA as a whole.



I've been hearing for two and a half weeks straight that NASA is the best branch of the federal government to work for, and at this point I definitely believe it. It is exciting to be surrounded by such passionate, intelligent people, and to be working on the cutting edge of human exploration. Every single person I've met at JSC has been incredibly friendly and so excited that the interns are here, which makes me feel good. Every time someone gets on the elevator with me they strike up a conversation and I've even had a couple women introduce themselves and ask me about myself while we're in the ladies room. Networking is networking though, so I'll take it.

Signing off for now, I'll update later this week with some of the ridiculously cool photos I took while touring the Neutral Buoyancy Lab and crew training simulators. 

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