NASA’s Earth-observing satellite missions track dozens of features of a changing planet — aerosols, sea levels, land cover, cloud cover — over years and decades. Sustaining that record for the scientific and operational communities who depend on it requires more than engineering talent. It requires planning for an uncertain future: anticipating where a mission delay or on-orbit event might create a gap in the data those communities rely on.
Lindsey Jacobson’s work helps NASA anticipate those disruptions before they happen and gives senior leaders options for managing them.A Pathways intern in engineering, Jacobson supports NASA’s Earth Science Division through the NASA Earth Science Strategic Integration Environment (NESSIE) team within the Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate (SACD) at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. NASA’s Pathways program connects undergraduate and graduate students with NASA centers through internships that, with satisfactory performance, can lead to full-time civil service positions. Jacobson has returned to NASA Langley every summer since 2022, splitting her time between the center and finishing her mechanical engineering dissertation at North Carolina State University.
