ASU undergraduate students get the opportunity to intern on NASA's Psyche Mission which is sending a spacecraft to the asteroid, Psyche, in 2022. Brooke Owen, one of the students involved, speaks more on the NASA opportunities offered to students.
Learn more: https://psyche.asu.edu
Brooke Owen: [00:03] My name is Brooke Owen and I am a junior biological sciences major with a concentration in neurobiology, physiology and behavior.
So Psyche is an asteroid that is orbiting between Mars and Jupiter in the asteroid belt and ASU and NASA are sending a spacecraft to orbit Psyche. It's an all metal asteroid, the very first of its kind, that we are going to send a spacecraft to, so it's very interesting and we are hopefully going to learn more about our own planets core based on the information we gather there.
I am the Psyche student collaborations and Psyche Inspired student manager. I basically manage all of the Psyche interns who work here at ASU and just make sure everyone is on track, keep everything running smoothly and I manage Psyche Inspired which is an artistic internship program that aims to make everybody feel that they have a space within the mission through artistic and creative projects.
So the interns for Psyche Inspired create a variety of artworks that help publicize the mission and get people involved, get people excited about the mission. Our interns are interdisciplinary so we have a variety of students from a variety of majors and it's also a national program so we have six interns here at ASU and nine interns national.
I really like space and I really wanted to do my part, whatever it may be as a biology student, to help advance space exploration in any way that I can. I think that this mission is so unique. It's the NASA mission that has the most undergraduate involvement ever and it's such a special opportunity. I never thought I would have an opportunity like this, especially as an undergraduate student. So I think it really inspires us to reach for the stars and do more and do whatever we really want to, you know, it's possible.
Reach the reporter at cchild1@asu.edu or follow @_cchild88 on Twitter.
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