Star-struck teen leads internship team at NASA

Yunji Lee fell in love with the stars when she was 8 years old.

On a trip with her parents to Joshua Tree National Park, she looked at the night sky through a telescope and was amazed.

“I kept looking up,” she recalls. “I was so curious about where we came from and how we were created.”

A moment like that can chart a life’s course. As a fourth grader with a fascination for exoplanets, Yunji attended the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Theodore von Kármán Lecture Series at Caltech with her mother, just for fun. Today, as she embarks on her junior year at Beckman High School, she continues to make progress toward a career focused on outer space.

She took a big step toward that goal this summer, leading a team of six youths from all over the country studying possible life on the moon at NASA’s STEM Enhancement in Earth Science summer internship.

Exclusive company

Eighty students, chosen from nearly 3,000 applicants, collaborated with NASA-funded scientists and engineers, using data and research from NASA’s Earth-observing satellites and images from the International Space Station.

Yunji’s team met virtually with mentor scientists through June, followed by two weeks in July on-site at the University of Texas at Austin’s Center for Space Research.

“I’ve always dreamed of working at NASA,” she says. “I’ve got NASA stickers all over my room. So when this opportunity came up, I said OMG and immediately applied.”

In Austin, her fellow interns elected her to lead their team, which, among other activities, used a simulated form of lunar dust in which to grow lettuce seeds.

Studying the moon helps scientists solve critical issues on Earth, such as improving water-purification systems and robotics to aid in natural disasters, Yunji says. More broadly, she adds, “We study the moon to help people here on Earth better understand our world. On Earth, it seems easy to see the differences between people, yet out in space, we are all part of that pale blue dot, as Carl Sagan has said.”

A local STEM star

At 16, Yunji, the only child of a teacher mother and an entrepreneur father who studied chemical engineering, has already distinguished herself in many ways. An accomplished violinist, she plays in the Community Youth Orchestra of Southern California.

As an eighth grader, she participated in the Orchard Hills Middle School Robohawks robotics team, which won the VEX Robotics World Championship in Dallas in a tournament of hundreds of teams from 26 countries. She has since joined Beckman’s robotics team.

Not least of the rewards of the NASA internship for Yunji was finding her peers among some of the brainiest young minds in the country. Team members became a “mini-family,” she says, and they still often communicate with each other.

In July, Yunji orchestrated her team’s presentation during a two-day symposium, recalls Becky Busby, the project’s on-site teacher. “I was continually blown away by the professionalism Yunji demonstrated,” Busby says. “From the very beginning of our in-person experience, Yunji stood out as a natural leader and motivator. Her dedication and attention to detail supported the success of our team.”

Yunji’s next step is to reunite with her team to present its work on lunar habitat design and lunar simulant experiments at the American Geophysical Union conference in New Orleans in December. After that, she intends to apply for a NASA Pathways internship, designed to help students prepare for full-time employment at the agency after they graduate from college.

She says the summer program helped her realize that “no matter the career I end up pursuing, I want to contribute to the world by helping others and uplifting humanity. I think this is one example of how space helps an individual realize their potential and is also a way to give people hope of a better future.”