Two ISU students experienced an opportunity of a lifetime this summer when they took internships with NASA.

Michaela Antolak and Matthew Thompson, both seniors in aerospace engineering, discussed with the Daily on how they landed these professional opportunities.

“I applied online at NASA OSSI: Solar — I had been applying to internships and co-ops at NASA since my freshman year,” Antolak said. “So after so many years of not getting anything, I was extremely happy to land an internship there.” 

Thompson has also exemplified a persistent attitude by doing things to “distinguish myself from other engineers that were applying to these internships.”

To do so, he “participated in one of the make-to-innovate groups, CySat, where we are working on building a satellite and sending it into orbit,” Thompson said.

He also attributed his success to taking as many applicable classes possible and applying for as many internships as possible, including NASA.

Upon landing these prestigious positions, the two discussed where their respective paths took them next.

Antolak was placed at Jacobs Technology, a contractor for NASA, for a 10-week internship.

She said Jacobs Technology was so impressed with her work, they requested her to stay on for two additional weeks, which she eagerly accepted.

“I worked on the TVIS — ‘Treadmill with Vibration Isolation and Stabilization’ project,” Antolak said.  “I helped with paperwork to resupply the on-orbit hardware, started the TVIS retirement paperwork and presentations, and I got to work on the actual hardware on the engineering unit and the astronaut trainer unit.”

Thompson also served an integral role.

“I was working on developing software and techniques for tracking the sun,” Thompson said. “This was being done so that my mentor could test out a telescope that was going to look at the sun. … I basically worked on a system that took a picture with a camera, analyzed it and then told a motor how far to move to center the camera on the sun.”

Opportunities like this are not solely a result of individual action. Both Antolak and Thompson said their time at Iowa State has suitably prepared them for assimilation into industry and make professional contributions right off the bat.

Thompson said nearly every class he has taken in his four years at Iowa State has given him information and skills that are useful in some shape or form professionally. A couple courses that stood out though, included Aerospace Engineering 160 (Aerospace Engineering Problems with Computer Applications Laboratory), and Physics 221 (Introduction to Classical Physics I).

“I was building and testing code; I did a lot of programming, and the skills I learned in [Aerospace Engineering 160] made learning a new programming language easy, and allowed me to pick up my project [with NASA] easily. My project also involved the use of cameras and some of the optics that go with that, which showed up in Physics 221.”

Antolak also attributed much of her success to her ISU education in that she has parlayed her abilities into not only her internship with NASA and Jacobs Technology, but also her current internship with Southwest Airlines.

While the industry, can be highly competitive, both students offered guidance to other students preparing for professional immersion.

“[There are] three things: be active on campus, keep your grades up and apply to as many internships as possible,” Thompson said.

Antolak also offered her perspective.

“I encourage everyone, not just aerospace engineering students, to apply to as many internships/co-ops as you can,” Antolak said. “Any experience is good experience. I have been applying since freshman year, and it took me until the end of my junior year to land an internship. Persistence is the key: Never give up.”