Harry She

“Earthquakes are always at the forefront of the New Zealand public’s mind, given the several devastating earthquakes we have had in the last decade or so. Our location on the boundary of the Pacific and Australian tectonic plates means that we will continue to be susceptible to earthquakes and the associated social and economic costs. This is why our APSS team believes that leveraging new nanosatellite capabilities to try and discover better detection technologies is a very worthwhile cause.

“Winning the APSS Mission Proposal Competition in 2017 gave me the opportunity to network with Pete Worden, a former Director of NASA's Ames Research Centre. I asked him what the options were in terms of exploring potential opportunities in the aerospace field and told him I was going on exchange to UCSB, which led to him telling me about the Principal investigator of NASA Starlight, Professor Philip Lubin, who happens to work there."

“CERN was absolutely magical; it was truly everything I hoped for and more! The lectures and workshops were absolutely top class, the programme itself was extremely well-organised, and the staff were also so helpful and friendly. I met so many interesting people from all over the world and from top universities, some of whom I am still in touch with today.

“The highlight of my experience was the beam steering workshop at CERN. There were only four spots for the workshop when they opened up for registration at 11am on a Tuesday, I waited diligently with the registration page open, ready to compete with the hundred or so other interns who were doing the same. Miraculously, I managed to successfully secure the first spot for the workshop and was overjoyed.

“The workshop gave us exclusive access to the main CERN control room. CERN makes a significant investment in these workshops, diverting the beam from the other experiments to give us interns the privilege to work with it. In total, CERN expends almost $3,000NZD an hour to divert the beam for each of these workshops. Here, we sat at a main station and were given three hours to steer the proton beam by controlling the superconducting magnetic fields. This was truly a once in a lifetime, awe-inspiring experience, and it’s quite likely that I was lucky enough to be one of the first New Zealanders ever to steer the beam from the main control centre at CERN."

"Meeting Pete Worden was a stroke of good luck. It allowed me to seize the opportunity to connect with Professor Lubin. Here, I talked about my background at CERN and Rocket Lab and how I was extremely interested in working on the NASA projects. I subsequently did a Physics research paper at UCSB and worked for the lab for the semester. After I finished my exchange, I then did an internship, where I began to work full-time for the lab.

“Directed energy (DE) systems, such as those being pursued as the only known method to achieve relativistic flight in NASA STARLIGHT and Breakthrough Starshot pose a hazard to Earth-orbiting spacecrafts. I was therefore tasked with writing satellite simulation software to compute the likelihood of interception with the DE beam for the different scenarios in proposed missions.

“To do this, I used the TLEs (Two-Line Element sets) of every unclassified satellite, and calculated the ephemeris (orbit) of each satellite at a given time. Using this, for a given laser array site on Earth, we obtained general probabilities of interceptions with the DE beam, and the interception times.

“The main outcome of the simulation was that the probability of interception with any active satellites and their orbital uncertainty during the proposed missions is extremely low. We also now have the capability to predict how to energize the DE beam without interception for shorter missions, and also when to gate off the DE beam where necessary for longer mission scenarios. I got to be the main author of the paper detailing the implications of this simulation, which has now been published in the Advances in Space Research journal!

“It felt surreal helping out with such a groundbreaking project. After working and researching there, I am convinced that Professor Lubin’s plan to use a high-powered DE beam will eventuate as humanity’s first interstellar mission. If this is the case, I may have been privileged enough to have contributed to the early stages of one of humanity’s most important Space missions ever."

"I believe it is a uniquely human quality to be ever curious about nature, so the mere concept of Space exploration has always ignited a spark of excitement in us; it is very easy to daydream about the worlds of possibility. Einstein once said, 'the important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvellous structure of reality’. I would one day — perhaps later in life after some upskilling — like be involved again with Space projects of similar scope where I can, such as I did with NASA Starlight.

“One of the most intelligent physicists I met at CERN gave me some of the best advice I’ve heard, which is to do what you love in the present moment. Many people try to plan their path and try looking too far into the future, which is inherently unpredictable. What you choose to do here and now is not a decision that’s set in stone, so don’t be afraid to be make bold decisions today, and be flexible about change. Never be afraid to pivot and be prepared to seize completely unexpected opportunities that may arise along the way.

Also, never be afraid to dream big. If you want something really badly, seize the day, make an actionable plan consisting of logical milestones to achieve it. Focus on the things you can do right now, and do them step by step."