Goddard Space Center
June 1, 2020 – August 7, 2020
Goals of your project/s:
Prepare flight software for the EXCLAIM mission, a balloon mounted telescope investigating star formation in the early universe. The software’s purpose was to send commands from a web interface on the ground and actuate them on the balloon, and take data from sensors on the balloon and display it on the web site.
Describe what you did during the internship.
A data flow model of the software was created. Because of virtual work, there was no access the the physical sensors, so the flow model would allow for development and testing of the flight software to be done without physical access, and provide a skeleton for which the production code can be created with only minor modifications.
Did you achieve your goals? What were the results and conclusions?
The flight model was created, along with some unit tests comparing its performance to the previous versions. The amount of computing resources needed by the software was reduced, and some work on integrating additional flight services into the software was done.
Describe positive lessons learned from this experience:
I learned a lot about working with hardware, which I hadn’t done before, as well as learning some new software tools and organizational strategies. Everyone at Goddard was very friendly, competent, and supportive, and I look forward to continue working with the EXCLAIM team.
Describe negative lessons learned from this experience:
It was certainly difficult to adapt to an all-virtual work environment and to stay motivated while working in my apartment.