Not every summer intern gets to work on a project slated for orbit.
Paula Adhikari, a 2012 graduate of Hunterdon Central High School, is the youngest of six elite interns selected for a 10-week stint at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Adhikari is one of two students assigned to the Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL) project.
A resident of Readington, Adhikari declared her dream to become an astronaut way back in eighth grade. She just completed her freshman year as an Aerospace Engineering major at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
“The main function of me being here is to learn,” Adhikari said. “I work as a project systems engineering intern for the Cold Atomic Laboratory. Part of my job is managing the requirements (baselines) of the mission. I was surprised by all of the steps needed to put something in space. There are years of planning, reviews, tests, checks, double checks, and so on.”
Adhikari explained that requirement documents are the “nuts and bolts” of any mission or project. Keeping meticulous records is crucial, she added.
“Requirements, once identified, are then verified and validated by the team,” Adhikari continued. “An example would be ‘CAL shall launch from (TBD location),’ that would be a requirement that states the specific location from which the project will launch, which is yet to be determined for our project.”
Adhikari didn’t actually apply for the internship.
“I sent out my resume to a few contacts, some in NASA, and eventually it got passed down to someone who saw something in it,” Adhikari said. “That person passed it on to some researchers, who gave me an interview — and here I am.”
The Cold Atom Laboratory is a new multiuser facility being developed for the International Space Station (ISS) at the Jet Propulsion Lab. The facility will study ultra-cold quantum gases in the microgravity environment of space, leading to temperatures as low as 10 picokelvin.
CAL will conduct groundbreaking atomic physics experiments on the space station. The facility is in the design-development phase, with an anticipated delivery date of December 2015. The instrument is slated to launch in April 2016. The facility, installed inside the space station, will then be remotely operated by a team of scientists at the Jet Propulsion Lab for at least a year.
The purpose of the CAL project is to study microgravity-cooling processes of ultra-cold quantum gases.
“I am most impressed by the actual aspect of sending something you’re working on into space,” Adhikari noted. “It’s amazing that something you took part in is going to be up there in orbit someday if everything goes as planned.”
As an eighth grader at Readington Middle School, Adhikari was the youngest presenter at a professional conference after an abstract she submitted to the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics was accepted.
Now six years later, Adhikari is closer to her dream of becoming an astronaut. One big step — making the transition from high school to college — went smoothly.
“Freshman year was great,” Adhikari said. “I made a ton of friends and learned a lot. I feel that the school (USC) is the perfect fit for me regarding social and academic atmosphere. Leaving home, I feel, would have been difficult no matter how far I went. But moving across the country was a big challenge. I quickly adjusted, however, and the sunshine definitely helped.”