RED JENSEN

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Master UAS Technician

Level

4

Lexile Ranges

Level 1: Less than 810

Level 2: 810-1000L

Level 3: 1010-1200L

Level 4: 1210-1400L

Educational Product

Educators & Students Lexile Level: 1210-1400L
WORK HA

Robert “Red” Jensen is one of those NASA 

aeronautical innovators that does a little bit 

of everything.

Officially, Red is the Master UAS Technician 

for NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center, 

which is located at the famous Edwards Air 

Force Base in California. UAS is short for 

Unmanned Aerial Systems, which is a fancy 

name for unpiloted aircraft most people these 

days just call drones. And that’s exactly what 

Red spends a lot of his time building, flying and 

otherwise tinkering with to help NASA learn all 

it can about operating drones in the increasingly 

crowded skies. 

Red also is an Operations Engineer and Chief 

Pilot of subscale UAS aircraft, and he’s responsible for drone pilot training and certification 

for researchers at Armstrong and NASA’s Jet 

Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Red’s base of operations, his home away from 

home, is the Armstrong Model Lab, just a short 

walk from the edge of Rogers Dry Lakebed, 

the historic desert sheet of clay where some of 

the most iconic aircraft in aviation history took 

off and/or landed – including Chuck Yeager’s 

X-1 (the first plane to fly faster than the speed 

of sound), the X-15 rocket plane (an airplane 

capable of reaching the edge of space), and the 

Space Shuttle.

Step inside Red’s domain and you will hear 3D 

printers buzzing in one corner, and see shelves 

full of small drones from past and current 

projects packing the walls. On those same 

shelves, you might find assortments of wings, 

rolls of high-tech composite materials on a 

towering stand (much like what teachers use to 

hold butcher paper), and a variety of aeronautical 

research projects at every stage of development. 

Also filling the lab are other members of Red’s 

team – technicians and university interns – 

who are most likely hunched over projects, 

or discussing among them what’s next for a 

particular aircraft test. It’s the kind of place 

that when you walk inside, the ambience can’t 

help but inspire you to look for an available 

screwdriver, strap on a pair of safety glasses, and 

join in by getting busy with some hands-on work.

You might think that a guy like Red, who is 

responsible for so much, and who works with 

cutting-edge aviation flight test programs for a 

complex organization like NASA, spent years 
RD

in school earning advanced degrees while writing 

peer-reviewed academic papers for the most 

prestigious engineering colleges in the nation.

You would be wrong.

It’s an important truth about life: Not 

everyone attains their career goals, their dream 

job, by taking the same path. Yes, many who 

work for NASA do follow the more typical 

route of high school and college, perhaps with 

a summer or two spent working as an intern. 

For most, that kind of rigorous schooling is 

the best way to be properly trained for careers 

in science, technology, engineering or math. 

Of course, others might graduate from high 

school, skip college, and spend a few years 

working while trying to figure out what career 

path they want to take and how best to achieve 

it. For Red, it was a case of following his own 

unique journey, bypassing the traditional 

college-to-career track, encountering a few 

twists and turns, but never straying far from his 

love of flight that started at a young age when 

he flew model airplanes.

Red was always interested in building things 

and figuring out how things worked. Like 

many young people with those interests, he saw 

himself as growing up to become an engineer. 

That made the most sense to him. But after 

getting accepted into an intern program, he 

found that a formal engineering program just 

wasn’t for him. He needed a different option for 

engaging his passions about flight. Meanwhile, 

there still were bills to pay, so Red took jobs 

where he could find them. At one point, he 

swept floors in an auto body shop, then began 

to apprentice in the auto paint shop. With a 

good eye for detail, and relying on what he 

had learned about painting radio controlled 

(RC) airplanes, he soon became an expert at 

custom paint jobs on cars, and in working with 

specialized paints.

At the same time, he kept proficient with his 

hobby of flying RC planes, an interest that also 

kept him frequenting his local model shop for 

parts and other supplies. Red soon established 

himself there as a beloved customer, and often 

struck up enthusiastic conversations with the 

model shop’s owner. The two became such 

good friends that when the elder owner decided 

to retire, he offered Red the chance to purchase 

the model shop – which Red did!
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Running a small business, even one as dear to 

him as a model shop, wasn’t exactly a role – or a 

career – Red had envisioned himself doing, but 

it was a chance for him to chase a new direction 

for his life. With some money coming in, and 

not being one to sit still for too long, Red went 

through pilot training and earned his private 

pilot’s license.

At the same time, he started to work as a test 

pilot for a company that built drones, and 

wound up working there ten years while he also 

continued to own and manage his model shop. 

As a drone test pilot, his position sometimes 

required him to fly vehicles at Armstrong, 

which allowed him to get to know the people 

there – and for the people there to get to know 

him. His expert model making skills soon 

became evident. So, when an opportunity 

to join the NASA team as a government 

contractor, and get paid to do the very thing 

he loved most came along – well, it turned out 

he was in the right place at the right time to 

start a new a career working at one of the most 

revered places in aviation history.

Today, Red oversees many different projects that 

find their way through the Armstrong Model 

Shop. He also manages the technicians and everchanging corps of student interns who come 

from universities near and far for the chance 

to help NASA. And all of them have never 

been busier. With millions of drones offered as 

holiday presents each year, and major companies 

wanting to deploy their own fleets of unmanned 

aerial vehicles for all sorts of purposes such as 

package delivery, new drone-related air traffic 

control systems and aircraft designs must be 

designed and tested. The drones needed to 

support that research often falls to Red and his 

team at Armstrong to build.

At any given time, there are about 20 different 

aircraft in the Model Lab. Some are so small you 

can hold them with one hand, while the largest 

can weigh more than 200 pounds and have wing 

spans more than 20 feet long. Some are small 

scale models of proposed aircraft designs that 

aren’t ready yet to be built full size. Test flying 

these smaller scale models is less expensive 

than building a full-sized airplane, which may 

or may not have some new design features that 

engineers are not ready to risk flying with a pilot 

on board until they prove it’s safe.

All of this activity means it is an exciting time for 

anyone interested in aviation, and Red is thrilled 

to be a part of it. He counts himself lucky that 

his education and career choices gave him the 

hands-on skills, experience and opportunity he 

needed to land his dream job at NASA’s premier 

flight test center.

Educators! 

Guide/assessment files 

for this reader are at 

https://www.nasa.gov/

stem-content/

red-jensen/