< back to articles
Julien’s 5-month internship at JPL
Published on
Julien was supported by the Foundation for a 5-month internship at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Caltech, California, USA. During his stay, he worked on a new concept of space gravimetry mission applied to the study of the internal structure of small asteroids.
He tells us
What were your motivations for this trip?
Space has always held a special place in my life. Although I dreamed of space exploration as a child, I’ve always had a strong attraction for all the sciences associated with it. So, after my high school years, I decided to move definitively into this sector that fascinates me by completing two years of scientific preparatory classes with the aim of entering the school of my dreams: ISAE-SUPAERO, the academic cradle of space and aeronautics. Thanks to hard work and success in the national competitive entrance exams, I was able to join the institute and begin specializing in the exciting field of space.
However, although I’ve always been curious about the aerospace industry, it’s a vast one, and almost every trade is involved. Wanting to work in this sector is a good thing in itself, but there’s a world of difference between a thermal engineer and a business engineer. Working for this industry was already an obvious choice for me, but my years at engineering school gave me a clearer idea of what I wanted to do in this sector.
What drew you to the JPL?
Julien Thau
At the end of my first two years of core studies, I decided to take a year off with the aim of learning more about the aerospace engineering profession. More specifically, I wanted to gain initial experience in space mechanics. Indeed, during my third semester, following my discovery of this discipline taught by Ms Lizy-Destrez, I realized that it combined both my passion for space and the interest I’ve always had in mechanics and trajectory prediction. Whether in high school or in preparatory classes, I’ve always been fond of these physical problems, and I find it fascinating to be able to predict with great precision the path a body will take depending on the environment in which it finds itself and its state. So when these bodies are planets or space systems such as satellites or exploration probes, I quickly realized that the engineer who would calculate these trajectories would be the engineer I wanted to be.
I began my gap year with a five-month internship at the Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) in Toulouse, working on the calculation of temporal solutions of the Earth’s gravity field.
At the end of this first internship, I went to Japan for six months, to Kyushu University of Technology (Kyutech), for an academic semester in which I was able to choose courses focused solely on space, thus broadening my scientific knowledge of aerospace issues.
Having gained the experience of this year and a half outside the curriculum, I returned to ISAE-SUPAERO for my final year of the engineering cycle. I’ve logically chosen the Earth Observation and Universe Sciences specialization, as well as the Space Systems Design and Operations specialization, with a focus on orbital systems. These seven months of courses and projects will complement my academic knowledge on additional themes and give me a more global vision of the different aspects of space mission design.
Tell us about your arrival at JPL?
To round off my final year of engineering studies, I decided to do my end-of-study internship at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). This mythical laboratory has been the cradle of deep space exploration, whether through the sending of probes like Voyager I and II, or the design and operation of Mars rovers like the recent Curiosity and Perseverance. As well as being one of the main sources of my past daydreams, NASA and JPL in particular embody the technical excellence of these space missions. Researchers and engineers from all over the world come to work here to contribute to the shared project of space exploration. Having the opportunity to evolve in such a culturally rich and technically demanding environment would be a perfect complement to my various experiences and teachings in the space industry. With this in mind, I set out to find a project in line with my internships and specializations, where I could contribute my experience and learn new skills. I contacted various researchers and ended up finding an original and promising mission concept to carry out gravimetry on asteroids. Following discussions with the researchers involved, I was finally selected to come and work at JPL on this mission as part of NASA’s Visiting Student Researcher Program. I worked on NASA’s mission analysis software, MONTE (Mission Analysis Operations and Navigation Toolkit Environment), to simulate the impact of various mission parameters on the final results of the Bennu asteroid gravity field estimate.
What was the project you worked on?
The aim of the mission is to determine the gravity field coefficients of a small interstellar body with a degree of precision never before achieved for this type of object. The idea is for a mother ship to send several tennis-ball-sized probes to the surface of the body. By tracking their sub-orbital trajectories with an optical system, the body’s gravity field – and hence its mass distribution – can be determined much more precisely than with more distant orbital trajectories. Precise knowledge of an asteroid’s gravity field provides important information on its internal composition, and is therefore a crucial factor in planetary protection missions, as well as providing useful data for research and understanding the formation of our solar system.
What do you take away from this experience?
During these six months, I was lucky enough to work with two benevolent mentors who were keen to help me develop my skills in a highly innovative and stimulating mission concept. I was able to progress in space mechanics and Python programming, as well as in systems engineering. As the mission as a whole involves a huge number of different and interdependent parameters, I had to develop an overall vision of the mission to better estimate certain parameters in terms of the quality of the desired gravity field solutions. On a professional level, in addition to these skills, the fact that I was working exclusively in English represented a challenge for me, as it was the first time I had to evolve professionally in a totally English-speaking environment. One of the highlights of my internship was the final presentation of my results to the entire Robotic Mobility System Department, which my family were able to attend online. I also had the chance to see the Europa Clipper probe in the clean room before it left for Cape Canaveral and was recently launched. Visiting some of JPL’s most emblematic sites, such as the Charles Elachi Control Center, where the Mars rovers are operated and from which their launches, which I had seen on television, were broadcast, also had a special flavour for the space enthusiast in me since childhood.
How would you sum up your stay?
On a human level, this stay was a unique opportunity to meet and exchange ideas with many engineers and to form friendships with student interns from all over the world. I had the opportunity to visit the many national parks that border California and discover the region’s mythical places. The grandeur of the American landscape, imperceptible in photographs, will remain engraved in my memory. Culturally, America is very different from what I experienced in Japan, but this trip has matured me just as much. I’m leaving this region with a wealth of memories and friends all over the world whom I can’t wait to visit one day.
This project will obviously have helped me progress technically, and taught me a lot about the world of research and how to manage a project as comprehensive as the one I was lucky enough to work on. For me personally, in addition to what I have learned, it has also been a journey rich in discoveries and memories. I hope I’ve been able to properly represent the excellence of ISAE-SUPAERO’s engineering training and embody the quality of the research activities carried out by the institute’s laboratories. My presence at a center as renowned as NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory may also have the merit of inspiring future ISAE-SUPAERO students with a passion for space to do an internship at the same place, and in turn contribute to the School’s reputation.
What’s next for you?
Having just completed my internship, as well as my engineering training, I’m now hoping to join a company or institution as a space mechanics or mission analysis engineer. My short-term goal is to build up real expertise in space mechanics so that, in the longer term, I can make my own contribution to major space projects, whether for Earth observation or more distant exploration missions. For the time being, and in the long term, I’d like to work in France and contribute to the French and European space effort, but I’m not closing the door on a potential new experience abroad. I don’t know if I’ll ever get the chance to go back there, but this experience will undoubtedly be valuable in future projects.
Any final words?
The Foundation’s support enabled me to meet my needs on the spot, and thus greatly contributed to my arrival. I’d like to thank all the Foundation’s donors. Thanks to their financial support, I was able to join, for the time of an internship, the company that made me dream so much when I was younger.