Internships put participants on genuine NASA projects under the guidance of agency mentors. Student challenges organize the work around a team's own designs: students develop, prototype and test solutions to technical hurdles facing mission planners. The choice is between contributing within a mentored agency project and building a design with a team. [S1]
NASA's volunteer science projects offer another participation model. The agency says volunteers can join from anywhere, when their schedules allow, and work with authentic mission data on tasks such as identifying comets and asteroids or searching for binary star systems. For someone choosing an activity around location and timing, those are explicit features of this option. [S1]
Career exploration also comes in different formats. NASA Career Technical Education Days bring students on-site to hear skilled technical workers explain their jobs, training and certifications. Next Gen STEM Virtual Career Connections instead provides live interaction with technical experts supporting NASA missions. Both offer contact with technical workers; the documented format choice is an on-site visit or a live virtual event. [S1]
Source documents
- Launch Into a New School Year With NASAhttps://www.nasa.gov/learning-resources/launch-into-a-new-school-year-with-nasa/