John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences

News and information from the UND John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences.

Summer Internship Opportunity at NASA Langley Research Center – Deadline March 1st


Summer internship opportunity for a student to create resources to incorporate space policy and political science into the human exploration systems analysis that is done at Langley.

Infusing Space Policy and Political Science into Space Systems Analysis

Performance, cost, and risk are often used to compare the technical merit of alternatives for human space exploration. However, because NASA is a political organization within the government, space policy and political science are two mostly un-modeled factors that influence decisions for the future of space exploration. This internship opportunity provides the student a chance to assist in the assessment of alternatives across all of these metrics. The student will gather and apply knowledge of space policy and political science to provide data-backed insights to the systems analysts creating the human space architectures for NASA. The student will create models of these political metrics to assist in architecture comparisons. Additionally, the student will support efforts to understand how space policy impacts future markets for resources in near-Earth space, with a focus on understanding the tradeoff between launch from Earth and delivery from in-situ locations. Products will include a white paper describing the student’s findings, documentation of the construction and application of models, and a presentation to NASA system analysts. Experience or familiarity with space policy, human space exploration plans, space systems analysis, space transportation modeling, space campaign analysis, and economic space development is highly desired.

This position is only open to US citizens, which is a general NIFS/OSSI requirement.  Apply at https://intern.nasa.gov/ossi/web/public/main/.  Search for Langley Research Center under NASA Center and Summer 2016.  The deadline to apply is March 1.