My (High School) Summer at JPL

Title - This summer JPL hosted more than 300 students through NASA/JPL education programs.

Title - 34 of those students will be high school seniors or college freshmen this fall.

Title - My High School Summer at JPL

Title - Dot Silverman. School status: High school, entering senior year. Favorite subject: Science.

Dot Silverman: I'm working on classifying different features on the Earth's surface by analyzing remote sensing data from satellites orbiting Earth.

I was...very exciting, [laughs] because it works. I took a lot of different pictures.

I wrote an algorithm, a cryosphere algorithm,

Title - Cryosphere: The portion of Earth covered by ice

Silverman: classifying ice, dark ice, water and land.

I came here and, truthfully, I didn't know what an algorithm was.

You pick a lot of stuff up here. And it's nice, because there's so many opportunities to learn new things.

Title - Pepito Escarce. School status: High school, entering senior year. Favorite subject: Engineering.

Pepito Escarce: I'm working on the Europa Jupiter System Mission. I'm working with their team.

And I'm working on the project that possibly will be sending an orbiter to Europa in 2020.

We're helping them determine if the trajectory they have right now is in fact the best trajectory.

Title - The proposed mission would study Jupiter and four of its moons, including Europa.

Title - Scientists believe that under Europa's icy surface is an ocean of water, which could harbor life.

Escarce: The engineers were joking that I could go to college, get a master's, get a PhD, come back and the satellite still would barely have launched.

I think the greatest thing about this experience has been getting to go around and look at all the different parts of JPL, because there's just so much that the...that the Lab does.

Even if I like what I'm working on now, there's just so many other things I could work on.

If...if I ever came to work here. Which would be really neat.

Title - Jourdan Hoapili. School status: University of Hawaii at Manoa, entering freshman year. Favorite subject: Engineering.

Jourdan Hoapili: Currently I'm working on ATHLETE, the robot. And I kinda do an image processing deal, where I can make it autonomously pick up cargo.

Title - ATHLETE: All-Terrain Hex-Limbed Extra-Terrestrial Explorer. Testing action is sped up.

Hoapili: The basic idea is that it would be going to the moon.

And it would be able to manipulate and move and help astronauts pick up cargo, move around habitats, stuff like that.

It's amazingly cool. I could be doing some boring task or something. But, no. I got to work on a really cool robot. And it's exciting.

And maybe, one day, you know, if it's on the moon, I'll be like, whoa! You know, I worked on that! That's cool!

And if I ever see, like, it go pick up cargo, or, like, I see a marker, I'll be, like, Hey, I designed that!

Title - Our interviewees participated in these NASA/JPL student programs:

Title - SpaceSHIP: Space Summer High School Internship Program. ALVA: Alliance for Learning and Vision for Underrepresented Americans. INSPIRE: Interdisciplinary National Science Project Incorporating Research and Education Experience.

Title - JPL offers a wide range of student programs. For more information, including program deadlines, visit education.jpl.nasa.gov.

Title - NASA. Jet Propulsion Laboratory. California Institute of Technology.