Houston Community College student Jimmy Lazo was accepted for a NASA electrical design Internship during the 2014 spring semester.

“It all started after Chemistry class. I saw a NASA’s National Community College of Aerospace poster on the wall of the Stafford campus and decided to give it a try,” he says.’

Lazo signed up with NASA Community College Aerospace Scholars. He attended a class, and passed the exam that followed. Later, they paid him to visit the Johnson Space Center for a workshop. His workshop project was to build a robot and test it out on a surface similar to Mars. “I met lots of people who work for NASA and was able to have a mini conversation,” Lazo said.

He later received a call from the NASA Education department asking him if he would like to fill-in a team for the Micro-g NExT challenge. In the challenge, students work in teams to design and build prototypes of spacewalking tools to be used by astronauts for spacewalk training in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

He accepted the challenge, and competed against other students from different four-year universities like Purdue and Yale. His team was comprised of students from different community colleges. “I was teamed up with three guys and we improvise to do the project,” explains Lazo.

He describes the challenge as interesting, but intimidating because of financial problems. Lazo’s team used their own money to buy materials, while the other students had budgets from their schools.

He finished the challenge in early May 2015. His team’s prototype was tested in the simulated microgravity environment of the 6.2 million gallon indoor pool where NASA astronauts train before space missions.

Afterward, he heard about a temporary internship from OSSI and he signed up for the Electrical Design Internship. OSSI is a NASA-wide system for the recruitment and career development for college students, it’s mostly for STEM majors.

Lazo received a phone call, but didn’t answer because he didn’t recognize the number. That night, he checked his voicemail and heard the message from NASA saying they accepted him for the internship if he was still interested. “I thought the call was some type of prank,” he said.

The objective of the internship is to find a way to lay out all the electrical wiring for the space shuttle, but in a smaller space. In November 2015, Lazo worked on the layout of two different boards. He has already finished designing the boards.

In December, he worked on the physical layout and some programming. Lazo says he enjoys being a part of the internship, and that he is enjoying his time working with NASA.

NASA’s Community College of Aerospace also gives students the opportunity to have a 3-day, online interactive experience at NASA. It’s available for middle school students all the way to community college students.

OSSI stands for One Stop Shopping Initiative. OSSI is a program connected with NASA to get undergraduate and graduate students to apply for career development opportunities primarily in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. OSSI gives out different types of scholarships for various departments and career paths.

Whether it’s just a few weeks or the whole summer, it gives students a chance to interact in their future career, and meet people in their field.