Melendrez '23 Accepted to SSP Astrophysics

“I’ve always been interested in space, so I thought I should apply just for fun,” said Melendrez. “I had no idea how competitive it was until after I was accepted!”

SSP provides an immersive, hands-on experimental science experience for participants. In teams, students and faculty form a supportive “living and learning community” for five weeks. Each team completes a real research project, taking and analyzing original data. Melendrez will be part of a team researching near-earth asteroid orbits.

“I’m really excited,” she said. “We’ll be doing research focused on an asteroid and at the end we get to submit our observations to the Minor Planet Center. That’s really cool because it can help with future asteroid predictions. I can’t wait to be involved in this research and maybe even taking it with me into studying astronautical engineering.”