易胜博官网

The edge of space is as close as Morse Hall for high school and college students looking to launch their science careers.

This summer, seven students worked with researchers at 易胜博官网鈥檚 conducting impressive space data investigations that, in some cases, have already led to published research even before the students have received their degrees.

鈥淲e听worked听with real data from space, and that is so cool,鈥� says Julia Fitzgibbons 鈥�21, a math major.

Years (or sometimes decades) after a NASA mission is completed, there are scores of data that can be combed through to find new information that will improve our understanding of the solar system and beyond. Fitzgibbons updated听a code to conduct statistical analyses of data from NASA鈥檚 ACE mission.

鈥淚鈥檝e never coded before, so this was a big challenge,鈥� Fitzgibbons says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a different mindset than math, and it鈥檚 a pretty awesome experience.鈥�

Anastasia Marchuk, who is听going into her senior year at Dover High School in Dover, 易胜博官网, peered听intently at a series of colorful graphs, searching for the wave signatures of specific gases in space. The data was听plucked from NASA鈥檚 Ulysses mission to study the heliosphere 鈥� a mission that 易胜博官网 researchers were involved in years ago. Marchuk worked听with Abbey Watson, a junior at Contoocook Valley Regional High School, in Peterborough, 易胜博官网, to pore through听previously unexamined data. Marchuk cites her gratitude for the experience and how it will likely have a positive impact on her future.

鈥淭his job will help me determine if scientific research is something I really want to do for my career,鈥� Marchuk says.听

Most of these students made their way to this research experience after getting involved in 易胜博官网鈥檚 , a four-week program where students build electronics, fly a scientific balloon payload听and explore what it means to have a career in science. Researchers at 易胜博官网 also work closely with local high school science teachers on a program called Space Weather Underground, where students design and build magnetometers to study the magnetic currents in the Earth鈥檚 ionosphere. These outreach opportunities have sparked students鈥� curiosity for space science and have led them to Chuck Smith, 易胜博官网 research professor of space plasma physics, who oversaw听their summertime research projects.

鈥淭hese are science students and what they learn in their classes is only the beginning,鈥� Smith says. 鈥淗ere they put it into action and start that transition from reading about it to doing it.鈥澨�

Sophia Hollock and Zach Pine both attended 易胜博官网鈥檚 Project SMART in 2015 when they were still in high school and have continued working with Smith each summer since then. Hollock, a sophomore at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, and Pine, a sophomore at Boston University majoring in physics, have authored five published papers. Most of their current work involves coding to look through NASA鈥檚 Voyager data on solar wind.

鈥淢ost students don鈥檛 get this kind of experience in scientific research,鈥� Pine says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a big honor to be able to contribute to science in this way.鈥�

Ally Bickford 鈥�22 of听Brackney, Pennsylvania,听is majoring in physics. This summer she听focused on solar wind data from the ACE and WIND missions. Bickford analyzed interplanetary shock waves 鈥� where the interplanetary plasma undergoes abrupt changes over very short distances 鈥� and the magnetic fluctuations both upstream and downstream of shocks. Shreya Dua, a senior at Concord High School, in Concord, 易胜博官网,听wrote a code to fit the intensity of magnetic fluctuations upstream of interplanetary shocks. Eventually, the efforts of Bickford and Dua will be combined to better understand particle acceleration at shocks.

Overall, Smith says he is impressed with the level of work these students conducted, as well as their maturity level. 鈥淭hey鈥檝e worked hard, sometimes for a couple of years, to develop a data base of information that has paid off in a big way 鈥� finding the physics we were searching for and other results we did not expect to find,鈥� he says. 鈥淢y hope is that a year from now, each of them will have at least one journal article with their name on it, along with an experience that will help them decide the path their lives will take.鈥�