When you get to live your dreams, you know you've worked in the right direction. For city-based Nandita Gaur the big moment was when she got an invite to be a part of the six-week NASA Airborne Science field experience. "Designed to immerse students in NASA's Earth Science research through the use of ground measurements, aircraft and satellite-data collection, this was something I always wanted to do," smiles this pass-out of Sacred Heart School, who later went on to complete civil engineering from Punjab Engineering College. With a deep interest in earth sciences and environment, "here I flew the MASTER sensor on NASA's DC-8 research aircraft to do studies on evapotranspiration and crop health studies," Nandita's research focuses on soil moisture scaling. It's an absorbing meet, with Nandita attending lectures at the University of California by university faculty members and top NASA scientists. "Our group of 28 undergraduate and graduate students received a rare behind-the scene look at instrument integration, flight planning, and payload testing that is the basis of every successful Earth Science airborne campaign carried out by NASA," Nandita tells us these airborne research campaigns play a pivotal role in the calibration and validation of NASA's space-borne Earth observations, remote sensing measurements and high-resolution imagery for Earth system science.

The student program is fashioned to train future scientists for earth science missions that can assist with studies and development and testing of new instruments and future satellite mission concepts. But for now, Nandita is already wrapping the research to complete her PhD in biological and agricultural engineering, before heading for some more research.