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I've actually always wanted to be an astronaut.

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So getting to work at NASA even for an internship is just a dream come true.

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And it's hopefully one step that I take on my path towards becoming an astronaut.

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Music.

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Music.

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Music.

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My official title is optical engineer assistant.  I'm basically helping out

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with part of a project called WFIRST. Specifically I'm working on the

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grism, which is one small part of that telescope.

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It's a prism with a diffraction gradient on it. The grism's going to spread out

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the light that comes through the telescope and it's going to help scientists

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figure out the chemical makeup of exactly what they're looking

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at. Maybe they can figure out what dark matter's made of

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or super novae or galaxy clusters.

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This is basically the bare bones of what we do

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do to measure the elements of the grism. We have a calibrated ball.

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It measures the difference to get from one surface to the other and tells us

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how the prototype for the grism is performing.

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I love working in the lab. Working hands-on, I'm a very hands-on

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learner. And my work is going to go into

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optimizing the grism. So I get to work on something and help so that it can

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go into space and that's really awesome. That's fantastic.

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beeps

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beeping