Ling is referenced in the book Rise of the Rocket Girls by Nathalia Holt, a biologist and science writer. She lives in South Pasadena, Calif., with her husband Art. Ling retired in 1994 but still keeps in touch with her former colleagues. Her work was respected by Charley Kohlhase, the Voyager mission designer, who didn't want anyone else to develop his software. Ling developed software for many missions over the years, including the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, Magellan, Mars Observer and Topex/Poseidon. Ling developed software for the IRAS, Magellan, the TOPEX/Poseidon spacecraft and Mars Observer.
Her high school crush, Canton College's student body president Arthur Ling, emigrated to America and married Ling. The author Nathalia Holt believes that "a lot of women ended up becoming computer scientists and engineers at JPL thanks to Helen's guidance". Instead of losing her talented team, Ling rehired women returning from maternity leave. At the time, women at JPL were forced to quit if they became pregnant. Ling encouraged women to attend night school and obtain the correct qualifications to work alongside her at JPL. Ling's group were responsible for performing trajectory calculations. She made efforts to only employ women computers during the late 1950s and early 1960s - the programming group used to call themselves "Helen's Girls". Ling was a supervisor for the computing group at JPL. Ling's brother worked at JPL, and she thought the job would be perfect for her.
She was the only woman to major in mathematics. She emigrated to the United States to attend college, and ended up studying at University of Notre Dame. Ling was born in China and survived the Japanese bombing of Hong Kong.
She made considerable efforts to make JPL more diverse. Helen Ling (née Yee Chow) is a former software engineer who worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). (left to right) Barbara Paulson, Vickie Wang and Helen Ling, early women working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, socializing over lunch (1980)
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