• Question: What was working in NASA like

    Asked by ryanclarkeburne to Joseph on 11 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Joseph Roche

      Joseph Roche answered on 11 Nov 2013:

      Working at NASA was wonderful. It’s an exciting place with really inspiring people. Sometimes it can be a little surreal when there are satellites being built around the corner from your office or when you meet Nobel Prize winners and astronauts walking down the hall to the cafeteria. It’s a fantastic place to work and it has good Irish connections. Every year a couple of scientists and students from Trinity College go to NASA to work there for several months.

Comments

  • Photo: Lauren

    Lauren commented on :

    I haven’t worked there yet but the aim is to eventually! I’ve been to NASA Kennedy Space Center, NASA Ames and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory doing camps, attending lectures and just visiting and have met some amazing, helpful and inspiring people who are always willing to help which is great. At the camp I did, I was working right beside the hangers where rockets were kept which was pretty cool! They were absolutely huge! NASA people are very friendly and willing to help, but the security to get in there is a bit mad…I had to show a passport and get an official pass to enter NASA Ames. It is also a bit of a challenge for non US nationals to work at NASA, (I have thought about joining the US air force or marrying an American to do so :p) but as Joe said, Ireland has some good links with them now so things are improving. Unlike Joe (who I am very jealous of right now! :p), I can’t tell you first hand yet what it is like but I have seen how willing the people at NASA are to help out aspiring astrophysicists trying to get there. I was even brought on a personal tour by an Irish scientist around Kennedy in Florida, which I thought was amazingly kind and these are the kinds of things which push people to continue working towards their dreams. I hope that throughout the course of my PhD that I will do some work out at NASA Ames, as there are some good opportunities to do so.

  • Photo: Colm

    Colm commented on :

    Haven’t worked for NASAyet, but I do work for The European Space Agency (ESA). Here at my university (N.U.I. Maynooth) we help to design instruments for space telescopes. ESA have really been catching up with NASA in recent years in terms of the size of their missions and successes. Working for ESA is great as I get to meet lots of really smart people, and I also get to play with cool stuff like liquid Helium.