The Launch to NASA: We Have Touchdown
Today was the first day of my NASA experience. The TechMasters community gave me tips on how to be successful on this endeavor such as how to dress and meet my supervisor. The day began with receiving badges, workstations, and introductions. One fact to note is that the Jet Propulsion Lab has a staff of 10 to 15 percent interns from the universities in the area, most of whom return to school in August. The attitude of the area is one of natural curiosity, friendliness, and progress. After checking into the badging and visitor offices, you are greeted with a sculpture that features a commemorative plaque detailing the lab’s role in human history. There are coffee shops set up nearby to provide necessary caffeine and refreshment to those who enter.
The Jet Propulsion Lab is memorable and unique in its origins. The campus was originally a private project of the California Institute of Technology. The purpose of the lab was to investigate the feasibility of using rockets as a means of space travel. Before this, rockets were used for war missiles. Using rockets to go beyond our planet would change the world forever. We launched rockets that took us beyond our planet and coded missions drawing from the laws of physics and mathematics with software languages that are no longer common as technology has evolved quickly. With all this in mind, you cannot help but wonder what humans are truly capable of since we have done all this in only a century.
When you are at the Jet Propulsion Lab, you may notice how the building clusters on the map as well as the building numbers appear to have no relationship. They may appear random with how they are laid out, but the logic behind it is that the buildings count up from the order they were built. The streets are named after the missions the Jet Propulsion Lab was involved in. There is also the “Mars Yard” where rovers get tested against potential dangers from huge boulders to sharp objects.
Once the necessary items to start work were given, it was time to dive in. The Jet Propulsion Lab evolves rapidly to keep up with technology for their continued success in their projects. One of the projects I will be working on is exporting valuable data from a legacy system to their new one. I also got to see software solutions to problems such as changing user stories so that bugs in an old program allowed a user to queue for a 3D printer. The energy of the team members I will be reporting to is contagious. They believed in what they do and genuinely want to help new “JPLers” learn.
At TechMasters, designers and developers often discuss how form and function are two delicate items to be balanced in software projects. User interfaces and interactions, as many developers know, is one of the most vital parts of making a good product but also one that might have to be given tradeoffs in the face of functionality and stability. I saw interfaces on programs that many of us find to be outdated. We are used to seeing interfaces made with Bootstrap, Material Design, and other modern tools to make interfaces intuitive as well as appealing. The project I would be working on involved making sure the users would not have to guess where items were that they had memorized in their past software solution. It would be a software tool that was usable on all platforms and could handle all the unique types of data that pass through the facility. The forms and prompts were easy to export, but the current interface lacks user efficiency. The part that I would participate in will be to help customize all the parts of the interface so that the software system will be easy to use and not require extensive maintenance.
The functionality of a technology is the other software challenge to balance with the user interface. The application needs to be reliable, consistent, and efficient. There are special formulas used to validate the correctness of the submitted data as well as special formats. Error-checking is imperative when it comes to tracking projects and handling complex information. It was interesting to understand how my work can affect the very missions we hear about on the news. The power of this project will be discovered soon so I can see how everything will get carried through each phase as well as how it will be used.
The back-end configurations and coding are going to happen after today. My limits as a developer will be tested like my fellow TechMasters face daily. Testing limits is in spirit of those whose endeavors made NASA what it is today.
