Electrical Engineering Student Gets Her Hands on the Mars Helicopter

A coveted internship at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California in the summer of 2018 allowed Chloeleen Mena (’20) to work on something that was out of this world. Literally.

Mena, an Electrical Engineering major at Embry-Riddle, spent several months on the Integration and Test team for the Mars Helicopter Project, Ingenuity (aka Ginny), which ultimately became a successful part of the Perseverance mission to Mars.

How do you get a JPL internship?

Although Mena felt she was as prepared as possible for the internship thanks to her professors at Embry-Riddle, she also learned that getting to JPL involved more than just academic achievement.

“My resume was as built like any inexperienced college student,” she said. “One thing to keep in mind is don’t dismiss activities or projects done in high school. An engineering project I did in high school is what caught the attention of my JPL mentor when they decided to contact me for a phone interview.”

Mena also said she learned from her experiences at Embry-Riddle “to be patient, because hard work and a little luck will pay off. I’ve had some hard semesters where I thought I wouldn’t make it through a class, but I studied hard and got the grade I needed on the finals.”

What is a JPL internship like?

“On my first day, I was extremely overwhelmed,” Mena said. “The [Mars Helicopter] project was already well underway, and I needed to catch up.”

Mena was assigned to assist with the Mars Helicopter test program and then write procedures for future tests. Here, she says, her Embry-Riddle education kicked in and made the difference.

“The curriculum that was most helpful to me during my internship at JPL was Technical Report Writing,” Mena said. “I used what I learned to section the procedures I was writing, make sure that the steps were detailed, and ensure that there was enough information for each step.”

Mena added that “different JPL projects have their own formatting requirements, so I used what I learned to section the procedures I was writing, make sure that the steps were detailed, and ensured that there was enough information for each step with images, callouts and tables."

In addition to working on the helicopter, Mena said JPL held several activities for interns during the entire summer, such as speaker events, short movie series and facility tours.

Mena, who wrote a blog about her summer at JPL, said her most exciting experiences as an intern were participating in the NASA Summer Intern Challenge, being interviewed for an article highlighting some projects at JPL and participating and watching any Mars Helicopter test activities.

Mena’s father, Braulio Mena, said it was a JPL open house that initially sparked his daughter’s interest in engineering.

“And there she was, 12 years later, making her dreams come true,” he wrote in response to the blog post. “It has not been easy, but hard work pays off.”

What can you do with an Electrical Engineering degree?

In addition to being inspirational, the hands-on internship experience at JPL also gave Mena new perspectives on shaping her goal of working in some type of space exploration.

“I realized that testing is what I have the most experience in but that isn’t all that I want to do,” she said. “So, I’ve become more open about what companies I apply to.”

Since October 2020, Mena has been working as an electrical engineer at Northrop Grumman.

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