Bowie college student interns at NASA

Next March, NASA will launch a rocket bound for the Moon. There will be dozens of people watching and hoping for the best, not only at the launch site in Cape Canaveral, FL, but also at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. And if she has her way, one of the observers in Greenbelt will be Cassandra Alberding of Bowie. She will have more than just a general interest in this particular launch; as an intern, Cassandra has spent two summers calculating potential launch times for a rocket that will carry a Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. This device will orbit the moon collecting date on topography, temperature, and lighting, that can be used to select safe landing sites for future manned missions to the moon.

Working at NASA has been a dream of Cassandra Alberding’s since she was 11-years-old. This year, Alberding is one of 38 young people serving 10-week internships working in all aspects of Goddard’s operations, chosen from approximately 800 applicants. She has just received her bachelor’s degree in math from St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pa., and in the fall will study aerospace engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park.

After two summers of working with special software that considers many variables including the speed of the rocket and the Earth’s orbit to calculate launch times, Alberding is now looking forward to seeing her work put into practice. She has calculated 19 possible launch dates in March 2009 so far. Her top choice? March 2 at 12:13 a.m. You can be sure that Cassandra Alberding will be wide awake and looking to the skies on that early morning.

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