Career Paths
This engineer designs aircraft or spacecraft and studies forces such as lift, drag, and thrust.
What is an aerospace engineer?
This propulsion technology burns fuel and oxidizer to create thrust for many rockets.
What is a chemical rocket engine?
This science studies planets, moons, and other objects in our solar system.
What is planetary science?
This career explains scientific and technical topics clearly to non-specialist audiences.
What is science communication?
The International Space Station travels around Earth roughly once every this many minutes.
What is 90 minutes?
This profession advises on treaties, licensing, liability, and other rules affecting activities in space.
What is space law?
This field combines sensors, estimation, guidance, navigation, and control to help vehicles follow a desired path.
What is GNC (guidance, navigation, and control)?
This field studies stars, galaxies, and the physical universe using observations and theory.
What is astrophysics?
This written document explains how to operate, maintain, or troubleshoot a technical system.
What is a technical manual?
This planet has the most extensive and prominent ring system in our solar system.
What is Saturn?
This career reports on launches, missions, discoveries, and the people behind them for news audiences.
What is space or aerospace journalism?
These spacecraft subsystems generate, store, and distribute electrical power.
What are electrical power systems?
Scientists use this instrument to separate incoming light into wavelengths and learn about an object's composition or motion.
What is a spectrometer?
This communications role manages public messaging and media relationships during a launch or incident.
What is public relations (PR)?
This NASA mission achieved the first successful U.S. soft landing on the Moon in 1966.
What was Surveyor 1?
This role coordinates scope, schedule, budget, and teams to deliver a complex aerospace program.
What is a program manager?
This engineering discipline checks that many subsystems work together and satisfy overall mission requirements.
What is systems engineering?
This region around Earth is strongly influenced by our planet's magnetic field and its interactions with charged particles.
What is the magnetosphere?
This document may provide journalists with mission objectives, timelines, technical background, and interview contacts before a launch.
What is a press kit?
Launched in 2021, this space telescope observes much of the universe in infrared light.
What is the James Webb Space Telescope?
This professional evaluates financial exposure and may help price coverage for high-risk launches or satellites.
What is a space insurance underwriter or analyst?
This process uses repeated physical or simulated trials to find defects and verify that a design meets requirements.
What is testing and verification?
This technique studies an exoplanet's atmosphere by analyzing how starlight changes as the planet passes in front of its star.
What is transmission spectroscopy?
This practice presents data and technical information visually so audiences can understand patterns and complex ideas.
What is data visualization?
This NASA spacecraft became the first human-made object to enter interstellar space, crossing the heliopause in 2012.
What is Voyager 1?