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By NASA
3 min read
NASA Citizen Science and Your Career: Stories of Exoplanet Watch Volunteers
Doing NASA Science brings many rewards. But can taking part in NASA citizen science help your career? To find out, we asked participants in NASA’s Exoplanet Watch project about their experiences. In this project, amateur astronomers work together with professionals to track planets around other stars.
First, we heard from professional software programmers. Right away, one of them told us about getting a new job through connections made in the project.
“I decided to create the exoplanet plugin, [for citizen science] since it was quite a lot of manual work to check which transits were available for your location. The exoplanet plugin and its users got me in contact with the Stellar group… Through this group, I got into contact with a company called OurSky and started working for them… the point is, I created a couple of plugins for free and eventually got a job at an awesome company.”
Another participant talked about honing their skills and growing their confidence through Exoplanet Watch.
“There were a few years when I wasn’t actively coding. However, Exoplanet Watch rekindled that spark…. Participating in Exoplanet Watch even gave me the confidence to prepare again for a technical interview at Meta—despite having been thoroughly defeated the first time I tried.”
Teachers and teaching faculty told us how Exoplanet Watch gives them the ability to better convey what scientific research is all about – and how the project motivates students!
“Exoplanet Watch makes it easy for undergraduate students to gain experience in data science and Python, which are absolutely necessary for graduate school and many industry jobs.”
“Experience with this collaborative work is a vital piece of the workforce development of our students who are seeking advanced STEM-related careers or ongoing education in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics) fields after graduation… Exoplanet Watch, in this way, is directly training NASA’s STEM workforce of tomorrow by allowing CUNY (The City University of New York) students to achieve the science goals that would otherwise be much more difficult without its resources.”
One aspiring academic shared how her participation on the science team side of the project has given her research and mentorship experience that strengthens her resume.
“I ended up joining the EpW team to contribute my expertise in stellar variability… My involvement with Exoplanet Watch has provided me with invaluable experience in mentoring a broad range of astronomy enthusiasts and working in a collaborative environment with people from around the world. … Being able to train others, interact in a team environment, and work independently are all critical skills in any work environment, but these specific experiences have also been incredibly valuable towards building my portfolio as I search for faculty positions around the USA.”
There are no guarantees, of course. What you get out of NASA citizen science depends on what you put in. But there is certainly magic to be found in the Exoplanet Watch project. As one student said:
“Help will always be found at Hogwarts, to those who need it.” Exoplanet Watch was definitely Hogwarts for me in my career as an astronomer!”
For more information about NASA and your career, check out NASA’s Surprisingly STEM series highlighting exciting and unexpected jobs at NASA, or come to NASA Career Day, a virtual event for students and educators. Participants must register by September 4, 2025. The interactive platform will be open from September 15-19, with live panels and events taking place on September 18.
Exoplanet Watch volunteer Bryan Martin
Credit: Bryan Martin
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Last Updated Jul 16, 2025 Related Terms
Astrophysics Citizen Science Exoplanet Science Exoplanets Explore More
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By NASA
Sylvie Crowell Credit: NASA Sylvie Crowell, a materials researcher at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, has received a NASA Early Career Initiative (ECI) award for a research proposal titled “Lunar Dust Reduction through Electrostatic Adhesion Mitigation (L-DREAM).” The research focuses on developing a passive lunar dust mitigation coating for solar cells and thermal control surfaces.
Operated under the NASA Space Technology Mission Directorate, the award will fund Crowell’s research in fiscal year 2026, beginning Oct. 1, 2025.
NASA’s ECI is a unique opportunity for the best and brightest of NASA’s early career researchers to lead hands-on technology development projects. The initiative aims to invigorate NASA’s technological base and best practices by partnering early career NASA leaders with external innovators.
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By NASA
Explore This Section Science Uncategorized NASA SCoPE Summer Symposium… Overview Learning Resources Science Activation Teams SME Map Opportunities More Science Activation Stories Citizen Science 4 min read
NASA SCoPE Summer Symposium Celebrates Early Career Scientists and Cross-Team Collaboration
From June 16–18, 2025, the NASA Science Mission Directorate Community of Practice for Education (SCoPE) Summer Symposium brought together a community of scientists, educators, and outreach professionals to celebrate and strengthen NASA’s commitment to developing its workforce and broadening participation in science.
NASA SCoPE is a NASA-funded initiative at Arizona State University that connects early career scientists with NASA Science Activation (SciAct) program teams to build capacity in science communication, community engagement, and educational outreach. Through targeted support like Seed Grants, Travel Grants, and Mission Liaison opportunities, SCoPE equips scientists with the skills and networks needed to meaningfully engage the public with NASA science.
Held in collaboration with key SciAct teams—including Infiniscope, Co-creating with Communities, NASA’s Community College Network, and NASA’s Universe of Learning—the 2025 symposium highlighted the incredible impact of SCoPE over the past four and a half years. The program has financially supported more than 100 early career scientists across a growing network of nearly 1,000 participants.
Over the course of the three-day event, 23 awardees of SCoPE Seed Grants, Travel Grants, and Mission Liaison Grants came together to share their work, connect across disciplines, and explore new avenues for collaboration. Twelve Seed Grant awardees presented their projects, illustrating the transformative power of partnerships with SciAct teams. Highlights included learning how to write for young audiences through mentorship from NASA eClips in support of the children’s book ‘Blai and Zorg Explore the Moon’, designed for elementary learners; a collaborative effort between ‘Lost City, Icy Worlds’ and OpenSpace that evolved into long-term networking and visualization opportunities; and an Antarctic research project that, through collaboration with the Ocean Community Engagement and Awareness using NASA Earth Observations and Science (OCEANOS) project and Infiniscope, both expanded training opportunities for expedition guides and brought polar science to Puerto Rican high school summer interns.
Beyond formal sessions, the symposium embraced community building through shared meals, informal networking, and hands-on experiences like a 3D planetarium show using OpenSpace software, a telescope demonstration with 30 high school students, and a screening of NASA’s Planetary Defenders documentary. Workshop topics addressed the real-world needs of early career professionals, including grant writing, logic model development, and communicating with the media.
Survey responses revealed that 95% of attendees left with a stronger sense of belonging to a community of scientists engaged in outreach. Participants reported making valuable new connections—with peers, mentors, and potential collaborators—and left inspired to try new approaches in their own work, from social media storytelling to designing outreach for hospital patients or other specialized audiences.
As one participant put it, “Seeing others so passionate about Science Communication inspired me to continue doing it in different ways… it feels like the start of a new wave.” Another attendee remarked, “I want to thank the entire team for SCoPE to even exist. It is an incredible team/program/resource and I can’t even imagine the amount of work, dedication and pure passion that has gone into this entire project over the years. Although I only found SCoPE very recently, I feel like it has been incredibly helpful in my scientific journey and I only wish I had learned of the program sooner. Thank you to the entire team for what was a truly educational and inspirational workshop, and the wonderful community that SCoPE has fostered.”
This successful event was made possible through the dedication of NASA SciAct collaborators and the leadership of SciAct Program Manager Lin Chambers, whose continued support of early career engagement through SCoPE has created a growing, connected community of science communicators. The SCoPE Summer Symposium exemplifies how cross-team collaboration and community-centered design can effectively amplify the reach of NASA science.
Learn more about how NASA’s Science Activation program connects NASA science experts, real content, and experiences with community leaders to do science in ways that activate minds and promote deeper understanding of our world and beyond: https://science.nasa.gov/learn/about-science-activation/
SCoPE-funded scientists and collaborators gather at the 2025 SCoPE Summer Symposium to celebrate program success, share ideas, build partnerships, and advance science communication and education efforts across NASA’s Science Activation program. Share
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Last Updated Jul 15, 2025 Editor NASA Science Editorial Team Related Terms
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By NASA
5 Min Read What Are Asteroids? (Ages 14-18)
What are asteroids?
Asteroids are rocky objects that orbit the Sun just like planets do. In fact, sometimes asteroids are called “minor planets.” These space rocks were left behind after our solar system formed about 4.6 billion years ago.
Asteroids are found in a wide range of sizes. For example, one small asteroid, 2015 TC25, has a diameter of about 6 feet – about the size of a small car – while the asteroid Vesta is nearly 330 miles in diameter, almost as wide as the U.S. state of Arizona. Some asteroids even have enough gravity to have one or two small moons of their own.
There are more than a million known asteroids. Many asteroids are given names. An organization called the International Astronomical Union is responsible for assigning names to objects like asteroids and comets.
This illustration depicts NASA’s Psyche spacecraft as it approaches the asteroid Psyche. Once it arrives in 2029, the spacecraft will orbit the metal-rich asteroid for 26 months while it conducts its science investigation.NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU What’s the difference between asteroids, meteors, and comets?
Although all of these celestial bodies orbit the Sun, they are not the same. Unlike asteroids, which are rocky, comets are a mix of dust and ice. Meteors are small space rocks that get pulled close enough to enter Earth’s atmosphere, where they either burn up as a shooting star or land on the ground as a meteorite.
What are asteroids made of?
Different types of asteroids are composed of different mixes of materials. Most of them are made of chondrites, which are combinations of materials such as rocks and clay. These are called “C-type” asteroids. Some, called “S-type,” are made of stony materials, while “M-type” asteroids are composed of metallic elements.
NASA’s Dawn spacecraft captured this image of Vesta as it left the giant asteroid’s orbit in 2012. The framing camera was looking down at the north pole, which is in the middle of the image.NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA How did the asteroids form?
Asteroids formed around the same time and in the same way as the planets in our solar system. A massive, dense cloud of gas and dust collapsed into a spinning disk, and the gravity in the disk’s center pulled more and more material toward it. Over time, these pieces repeatedly collided with each other, sometimes resulting in smaller fragments and other times clumping together, resulting in much bigger objects.
Objects with a lot of mass – like planets – produced enough gravity to pull themselves into spheres, but many smaller objects didn’t. These ended up becoming comets, small moons, and, yes, asteroids. Although some asteroids have a spherical shape, most have irregular shapes – sometimes oblong, bumpy, or jagged.
The main asteroid belt lies between Mars and Jupiter, and Trojan asteroids both lead and follow Jupiter. Scientists now know that asteroids were the original “building blocks” of the inner planets. Those that remain are airless rocks that failed to adhere to one another to become larger bodies as the solar system was forming 4.6 billion years ago.Credits: NASA, ESA and J. Olmsted (STScI) Where are asteroids found?
Most of the asteroids we know about are located in an area called the main asteroid belt, which is found in the space between Mars and Jupiter. But asteroids are found in other parts of the solar system, too.
Trojan asteroids orbit the Sun on the same orbital path as a planet. They’re found at two specific points on the planetary orbit called Lagrange points. At these points, the gravitational pull of the planet and the Sun are in balance, making these points gravity-neutral and stable. Many planets have been found to have Trojan asteroids, including Earth.
An asteroid’s location can also be influenced by the gravity of planets it passes and end up pushed or pulled onto a path that brings it close to Earth. When asteroids or comets are on an orbital path that comes within 30 million miles of Earth’s orbit, we call them near-Earth objects.
Illustration of NASA’s DART spacecraft and the Italian Space Agency’s (ASI) LICIACube, with images of the asteroids Dimorphos and Didymos obtained by the DART spacecraft.Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Joshua Diaz Could an asteroid come close enough to hit Earth?
Yes! Throughout history, asteroids or pieces of asteroids have collided with Earth, our Moon, and the other planets, too. The effects of some of these impacts are still visible. For example, Chicxulub Crater was created 65 million years ago when a massive asteroid struck Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. The resulting cloud of dust and gas released into Earth’s atmosphere blocked sunlight, leading to a mass extinction that included the dinosaurs. More recently, in 2013, people in Chelyabinsk, Russia, witnessed an asteroid almost as wide as a tennis court explode in the atmosphere above them. That event produced a powerful shockwave that caused injuries and damaged structures.
This is why NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office keeps a watchful eye on near-Earth objects. The Planetary Defense team relies on telescopes and observatories on Earth and in space to detect and monitor objects like these that could stray too close to our planet.
The agency is working on planetary defense strategies to use if an asteroid is discovered to be heading our way. For example, NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission in 2022 was a first-of-its-kind test: an uncrewed spacecraft with an autonomous targeting system intentionally flew into the asteroid Dimorphos, successfully changing its orbit.
Jason Dworkin, OSIRIS-REx mission project scientist, holds up a vial containing part of the sample from asteroid Bennu in 2023.Credit: NASA/James Tralie How does NASA study asteroids?
NASA detects and tracks asteroids using telescopes on the ground and in space, radar observations, and computer modeling. The agency also has launched several robotic explorers to learn more about asteroids. Some missions study asteroids from above, such as the Psyche mission, launched in 2023 to study the asteroid Psyche beginning in 2029. Other missions have actually made physical contact with asteroids. For example, the DART mission mentioned above impacted an asteroid to change its orbit, and the OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security – Regolith Explorer) spacecraft collected a sample of material from the surface of asteroid Bennu and delivered the sample to Earth in 2023 for scientists to study.
Career Corner
Want a career where you get to study asteroids? Here are some jobs at NASA that do just that:
Astronomer: These scientists observe and study planets, stars, and galaxies. Astronomers make discoveries that help us understand how the universe works and how it is changing. This job requires a strong educational background in science, math, and computer science. Geologist: Asteroids are made of different types of rock, clay, or metallic materials. Geologists study the properties and composition of these materials to learn about the processes that have shaped Earth and other celestial bodies, like planets, moons, and asteroids. More About Asteroids
Asteroid Facts
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Center for Near Earth Object Studies
Planetary Defense at NASA
Asteroid Watch: Keeping an Eye on Near-Earth Objects
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By NASA
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Some career changes involve small shifts. But for one NASA engineering intern, the leap was much bigger –moving from under the hood of a car to helping air taxis take to the skies.
Saré Culbertson spent more than a decade in the auto industry and had been working as a service manager in busy auto repair shops. Today, she supports NASA’s Air Mobility Pathfinders project as a flight operations engineer intern at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, through NASA’s Pathways program.
“NASA has helped me see opportunities I didn’t even know existed
Saré Culbertson
NASA Intern
“NASA has helped me see opportunities I didn’t even know existed,” she said. “I realized that being good at something isn’t enough – you have to be passionate about it too.”
With a strong foundation in mechanical engineering – earning a bachelor’s degree from California State University, Long Beach, Antelope Valley Engineering Program – she graduated magna cum laude and delivered her class’s commencement speech. Culbertson also earned two associate’s degrees, one in engineering and one in fine arts.
NASA Pathways intern Saré Culbertson, right, works with NASA operations engineer Jack Hayes at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, on Nov. 7, 2024. They are verifying GPS and global navigation satellite system coordinates using Emlid Reach RS2+ receiver equipment, which supports surveying, mapping, and navigation in preparation for future air taxi test flight research.NASA/Genaro Vavuris Before making the switch to aeronautics, she worked at car dealerships and independent car repair facilities while in college. She also led quality control efforts to help a manufacturer meet international standards for quality.
“I never thought land surveying would have anything to do with flying. But it’s a key part of supporting our research with GPS and navigation verification,” Culbertson said. “GPS measures exact positions by analyzing how long signals take to travel from satellites to ground receivers. In aviation testing, it helps improve safety by reducing signal errors and ensuring location data of the aircraft is accurate and reliable.”
A musician since childhood, Culbertson has also performed in 21 states, playing everything from tuba to trumpet, and even appeared on HBO’s “Silicon Valley” with her tuba. She’s played in ska, punk, and reggae bands and now performs baritone in the Southern Sierra Pops Orchestra.
Saré Culbertson, NASA Pathways intern at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, adjusts the Emlid Reach RS2+ receiver equipment that connects with GPS and global navigation satellite systems on Nov. 7, 2024, in preparation for future air taxi test flight research.NASA/Genaro Vavuris The NASA Pathways internship, she says, changed everything. Culbertson was recently accepted into the Master of Science in Flight Test Engineering program at the National Test Pilot School, where she will be specializing in fixed wing performance and flying qualities.
Her advice for anyone starting out?
“Listen more than you talk,” she said. “Don’t get so focused on the next promotion that you forget to be great at the job you have now.”
During her internship, Culbertson is making meaningful contributions toward NASA’s Urban Air Mobility research. She collects location data for test landing sites as part of the first evaluation of an experimental commercial electric vertical takeoff landing aircraft, a significant milestone in the development of next generation aviation technologies. From fixing cars to helping air taxis become a reality, Saré Culbertson is proof that when passion meets persistence, the sky isn’t the limit – it’s just the beginning.
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Last Updated Jun 23, 2025 EditorDede DiniusContactLaura Mitchelllaura.a.mitchell@nasa.govLocationArmstrong Flight Research Center Related Terms
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