Interning at NASA Fulfills a Lifetime Ambition for This CAS Student | BU Immediately

Aashi Parikh participated within the company’s Student Airborne Research Program, studying how NASA scientists conduct analysis—and performing fieldwork of her personal

Boston University senior Aashi Parikh spent the previous two months pursuing her ardour for earth science with a federal company finest recognized for its work investigating the heavens. 

A marine science main, Parikh (CAS’26) interned as a part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Student Airborne Research Program (SARP). The eight-week internship program, a part of NASA’s Airborne Science Program, offers rising senior undergrads the possibility to find out about earth science analysis from NASA staffers and a possibility to carry out fieldwork of their very own. 

Parikh loves marine science. Growing up in Cleveland, she says, she was all the time fascinated by the ocean. But a highschool internship at a botanical backyard launched her to environmental science—her minor. “I’ve tried different career paths,” Parikh says, noting that she was briefly on a premed monitor. “But I always go back to the environment—I just love being outside and doing things that help our planet.”

She had lengthy dreamed about working for NASA. She knew the group had an Earth Sciences Division (ESD), which research the planet’s processes and the way they’re impacted by local weather change. She began in search of summer time 2025 internship alternatives with ESD halfway by means of her junior yr—and landed at SARP. 

“I would always watch videos about NASA and say that I wanted to work here,” she says, “but I didn’t think I would actually be working here.”

Parikh was one in all 23 contributors within the East Coast model of SARP (there’s an equal West Coast model). According to this system’s web site, the primary two weeks are a “focused crash course in Earth science research.” Interns then spend the subsequent six weeks engaged on a person analysis mission with the assistance of graduate pupil mentors. 

All interns obtain a stipend and funding to cowl their journey. They’re housed at NASA bases and close by faculties all through this system. Parikh spent her first two weeks at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. There, NASA scientists gave displays about their work to the scholars. Then got here one of many coolest elements of this system, she says: flight campaigns.

The Airborne Science Program operates a number of plane outfitted as flying science labs for NASA analysis. Parikh spent this system’s second week onboard a P3 and a B200, observing how scientists work throughout analysis flights. She additionally received to take part: researchers wanted to gather information on unstable natural compounds and hint gasoline spikes over areas all through the Eastern seaboard. Parikh primarily helped function a gasoline chromatography machine.

“The flights were usually two to three hours, and [the pilots] would do tricks like spirals to collect data,” she says. “We got to move around the plane asking questions and helping each scientist collect data with their instrument—it was really cool seeing what each instrument does.” 

She and her fellow interns spent the remaining weeks at Virginia Commonwealth University engaged on analysis tasks. Interns have been break up into 4 analysis teams: atmospheric science, terrestrial fluxes, ocean distant sensing, and hydroecology. Parikh was within the atmospheric sciences group. She measured emissions from chemical plant plumes at an industrial web site in Virginia, evaluating her information with the 2024 NASA information from the identical web site to research the well being impacts on space residents. 

Parikh introduced her outcomes on the finish of the summer time and can achieve this once more on the annual American Geophysical Union convention in December. 

The whole expertise, she says, was unbelievable. As properly as her fieldwork, she realized useful abilities like coding and networking. The program additionally helped solidify her subsequent step. Before this summer time, Parikh wasn’t certain about her post-grad plans. Now, she’s set on graduate faculty. 

“The program helped me realize that I do want to go to grad school for environmental science,” she says. “I really like marine science, but I liked branching out and learning about this different field.”

And if she finally ends up again at Langley sooner or later, she could be happy. 

“I would want to work for NASA doing research and maybe being a program manager,” Parikh says. “I’ve made good connections right here, and so they all discuss why it’s such an incredible firm—I’d wish to [come back] right here.

Explore Related Topics: