Internship Experience

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Mission Design and Navigation Group (392C) (10/2022 – Present)

  • Mars Sample Return Mission Analysis and Flight Path Control
  • Full-time employment beginning June 2023

Continuum-Space

Mission Design and Operations (05/2022 – 08/2022)

  • Tasked to learn and utilize JPL’s high-fidelity, low thrust optimizer, Mystic.
  • Designed example cases that incorporate customer-specific requirements.
  • Investigating the implementation of Mystic into existing company software tools.
  • Created Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO) to Low Lunar Orbit (LLO) medium fidelity model
  • Creating Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO) to Geostationary Orbit (GEO) orbit simulations

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Mission Design and Navigation Group (392C) (05/2021 – 07/2021)

  • Assessed the navigability of several full ephemeris low-energy trajectories to Europa.
  • Used MONTE, an in-house astrodynamics Python library, to evaluate applicability of linear propagation methods for this highly non-linear dynamical system.
  • Improved delivery to Europa and reduced along-track errors without a ΔV penalty.
  • Ran and compared several linear and non-linear maneuver optimization Monte Carlo Simulations.
  • Findings presented at 2021 AAS Astrodynamics Specialist Conference (AUG.)

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Mission Design and Navigation Group (392K) (09/2019 – 12/2019) (06/2020 – 11/2020)

  • Assisting with the development of a new maneuver simulation data visualization tool.
  • Learning about statistical maneuver design, tour design, and maneuver placement
  • Working with JPL’s MONTE  and LAMBIC software tools to learn about and create reference trajectories and maneuvers.
  • Findings presented at 2021 AAS Spaceflight Mechanics Conference (FEB.)

Aerovironment

GNC/Aeromechanical Group (05/2019 – 08/2019)

  • Worked on creating navigation algorithms for efficient flight plan generation for light aerial mapping UAVs.
  • Involved with concept of operations and performance estimation for light mapping UAV concept.
  • Researched viability of a military VTOL Group 3 UAV using multidisciplinary design optimization (various subsystem sizing and requirements including: power, thrust, wing size/lift, endurance estimates, and systems + payload)