Cape junior selected for NASA internship

Noah Branson almost missed his invitation to a NASA internship.

The email inviting Noah to participate in a remote version of NASA's STEM Enhancement in Earth Science (SEES) summer high school intern program almost got lost because of an ambiguous subject line.

"I thought it was like a spam account," Noah said with a laugh.

But, as luck would have it, the 17-year-old Cape Girardeau Central High School junior got the message just in time to accept the invitation.

Now, he's looking forward to the summer program, an opportunity sought by many but realized by few. Of the 600 high school juniors who applied for SEES, only 45 were chosen to participate, according to Margaret Baguio, SEES program manager with the Texas Space Grant Consortium.

"Every child that has participated in SEES has gone on to major in STEM," Baguio said by phone Thursday. "Some of them are Google interns, one helped analyze Cassini [spacecraft] data while she was in college ... I mean, they're just amazing kids."

The program should have taken place from July 18 to Aug. 1 on the Austin, Texas, campus of the University of Texas, but because of COVID-19-related closures, it will instead be held virtually.

Although they won't get the full internship experience, the interns will be invited for "a long weekend" to the Johnson Space Center once it reopens in the fall or spring, Baguio said. While there, they'll get the chance to meet their mentors -- all NASA subject matter experts -- in person.

"They'll have astronauts speak to them at that time, they'll get to go behind the scenes at Johnson Space Center, into laboratories and to the neutral buoyancy lab," Baguio said, "all those special things."

The students will also work on a virtual project with their NASA mentor, Baguio said. Once the interns complete the internship project, they will make final presentations through Zoom, which Baguio said will be live-streamed on Facebook and YouTube on July 30 and 31 for friends and family to watch.

Noah said moving the program online was the right decision but said it was "still kinda sad."

"I was really looking forward to going to Texas and hanging out with a lot of people that I haven't met and meeting some other really bright students," Noah said. "But, unfortunately, you know, this is kind of the world we live in right now."

The application process required written essay questions, an introduction video, a letter of recommendation and an interest in STEM, the latter of which was no problem for Noah to demonstrate.

"I've always been interested in science ever since I was a little kid," Noah said. "It's kind of like space was ... a frontier I didn't know a lot about, so that's why I gained interest in it."

The thing about the universe, Noah said, is that it's constantly expanding, and there are "always new things to explore."

"It's incredible how we're discovering new things about our universe every day," he said.

For the video portion of his application, Noah can be seen explaining his interest in SEES from among planets of the solar system, standing above a United States map to illustrate his many travels and even in front of the "Friendship 7" spacecraft.

Noah's application video came to life thanks to assistance from Randy McWilson, who is a digital media instructor at the Cape Girardeau Career and Technology Center. Noah's mother, Dana Branson, said McWilson was "really the genius behind that video."

"He and Noah worked on it together, but Randy McWilson is the reason why that [video] looks professionally done," she said by phone Wednesday.

Baguio said the review process for applicants is always "a massive undertaking," and students who are selected for the competitive program "must be pretty amazing" because every application is reviewed by four to five judges.

Noah has already traveled to all 50 states and has seen countless space-themed museums, historical sites and exhibitions. Of those experiences, he said some of the most formative were trips to the Huntsville Space and Rocket Center and the Maunakea Observatory in Hilo, Hawaii.

"In Hawaii, there isn't a lot of light pollution," Noah said. "So you can already see thousands of stars in the night sky just walking outside."

But Noah recalled that from the observatory on the mountain tops, he could see the moon up close and constellations from the northern and southern hemispheres, as well as Jupiter and some of its moons.

"It was an amazing opportunity," he said, noting many constellations can be found decorating the walls of his bedroom.

From the internship, Noah hopes to get a deeper understanding of what it's like to work in STEM fields. And although he's interested in many subjects like astronomy, astrophysics and chemistry, he's still figuring out what kind of career he'd like to have one day.

"One of the dream jobs I would love to do is work at NASA," he said. "The sooner I figure out what I want to go into, the sooner I can be able to start looking more into that and furthering my expertise in the subject."