~ WEEK ONE OF SLSTP ~ Sunday 6/11/17 Move in day! Everyone arrived today at their own time, unpacking and moving into our new home here at Ames. The living accommodations are nicer than expected- common areas with couches and a fridge and two people per bedroom with private bathrooms. We all pitched in to cook food for a picnic as people slowly arrived. We enjoyed tacos on the lawn in front of our dorms. Some of us went out for a grocery run that night, but we all tried to get a full night’s sleep before starting our first day here at NASA Ames! “I feel fine. How about you?” -Yuri Gagarin, April 12th, 1961

Monday 6/12/17 Monday started with orientation to Ames and some basic safety training. We had a warm welcome by Sid Sun, Chief of the Space Biosciences Division. We also received a great glimpse into Space Biology and NASA’s journey to Mars by Kevin Sato, Space Biology Senior Project Scientist. Elizabeth Taylor, the project manager for Space Biology here at Ames introduced our group to the goals of Space Biology and the importance of our research. Last but certainly not least, we got a chance to talk with Jon Rask, Director of SLSTP, about our plan for the summer and our group project. After some safety instruction from the Ames Police and Fire Marshall, we grabbed lunch at MegaBytes, the go-to breakfast and lunch place here at Ames. We met up with our mentors at this point and spent the rest of the day in our individual labs, learning more about our projects. To end the day, we had our first of many Monday Night Live meetings to recap what we’ve done and what we’ll be doing moving forward.

“It’s a fixer-upper of a planet, but we could make it work.” -Elon Musk, May 2013 on the possibility of humans on Mars

Tuesday 6/13/17 Tuesday morning started with our daily 7:30am breakfast at Megabytes, then off to safety boot camp. Most of us were pretty exhausted from the jam-packed day we had on Monday, but we managed to stay awake through all of the safety presentations. We went to our first Summer Series lecture that afternoon, presented by Alfonso Davilla on “How to Search for a second genesis of life.” The summer series lectures are a great opportunity for us to learn about things happening in all sectors of the space industry across the globe. We all grabbed lunch at Megabytes afterwards, then headed off to individual labs for the remainder of the afternoon. We’ve quickly realized how long and full our days are, so many people took advantage of the evening to get a full night’s sleep. A few of us ventured off to Shoreline Amphitheatre for a Future and Migos concert on recommendation of the safety boot camp leader. “There’s a good reason why life generates complexity.” -Alfonso Davilla, SETI Institute Research Scientist, June 13th, 2017

Wednesday 6/14/17 All day wednesday was spent completing a top-secret group team building activity. Unfortunately, we can’t share many more details than that, but we will say that the day was filled with many fun challenges and we all learned how to work together to complete a difficult task. We also learned a lot about the way that NASA works with private contractors and civil servants in order to make a mission successful. This activity left us all excited to be working on our own projects here at Ames, as well as our group project for the summer. Some of the interns went to Mountain View that evening for dinner at a local Indian Restaurant. We’ve all started to really settle into our new home here!

“Failure is not an option.” -Ed Harris, Apollo 13

Thursday 6/15/17 Thursday was our first full day in the labs! After group breakfast at MegaBytes, we were off to work with our mentors. Midday, some of us attended another NASA Summer Series talk by Hans Koenigsmann, about SpaceX’s partially reusable rockets: Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. After the talk, we had a debrief meeting with Jon Rask, Desi Bridges, Kristina Gibbs, and Brad Bailey, where we talked over the lessons we learned from the team building exercise. That evening, a group of us took a trip to Costco for microwavable mac and cheese and the likes. “That’s when you’ve really achieved something: when people don’t believe you.” -Hans Koenigsmann, VP Mission Assurance at SpaceX, June 15th 2017

Friday 6/16/17 Friday was another beautiful sunny 75 degree day at Ames, perfect for a bike ride! At 10:30 am we all received our beach cruiser NASA bikes, locks, and classic red helmets. After a day working with our mentors, we rode back to the lodge from our labs in style. Friday was also the day we submitted our abstracts to ASGSR, in the hopes that we would earn the amazing opportunity to present our research at the conference this coming October.

“There is perhaps no better a demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.” -Carl Sagan, January 1995 Saturday/Sunday 6/17/17

Breakfast Saturday was donuts! After sleeping in, the group headed to Onalli’s favorite bakery for some delicious treats before heading up to San Francisco to explore for the day. The feast did not stop there: we ate poke bowls and ramen by Golden Gate Park, and chowed down on some chowder at Boudin at Fisherman’s Wharf. We really enjoyed spending time in the city and petting all the corgis at Corgi Con on Ocean Beach. Some of us stayed in town for dinner and watched the sun set over the Golden Gate Bridge. Sunday was extremely hot - 102 degrees! The pool was one way to escape the heat. That evening, we worked on ideas for our group project, which is a proposal for an experiment that will take place on a 3 minute parabolic microgravity flight! “The sky is the limit only for those who aren't afraid to fly!” -Bob Bello, 2010