Christine Mouser wasn't surprised to wind up as an intern this summer at a space center. After all, she always wanted to be an astronaut, and spending 10 weeks at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., seemed natural.

Mouser is a senior at Saint Xavier University, 3700 W. 103rd St., Chicago, where she is majoring in mathematics and history. The summer internship at Goddard was specifically for college students with disabilities, so Mouser, who is dyslexic, decided to apply.

Not only was she happy to be accepted into the program along with 35 other students from colleges across the country, she was happy to be in a "real" internship program where she did research and wasn't just a gofer for her mentor.

I worked in a lab for astronomy and solar physics research. When I first got there I was asked to write a (math) program, which took me four hours and the program was accepted by my mentor," Mouser said.

For more than two months, Mouser did research in thermal dynamics, studying how temperatures change from hot to cold and if star explosion has anything to do with the vast differences in temperatures. Her research and a subsequent paper she wrote had to do with math equations used to help understand global warming, mass pollution and the nature of both the Earth and the universe.

Randall Smith, a physicist at Goddard Space Flight Center, was Mouser's mentor. Mouser's research was part of Smith's doctoral thesis.

Mouser, a Clarendon Hills native who lives on campus, will graduate from Saint Xavier next May and plans to continue her education in math and computer science. She will continue to work with Smith via e-mail and will be at Goddard again next summer.

"My next internship (there) won't be for students with disabilities, so it may be a little harder because I'm a little slow at visualizing. But I'm not slow at thinking," Mouser said. "And I still want to be an astronaut."