Contents Help Wanted 4 Awesome Astronomers 6 A New Era with Astrophysicists 8 Building Space Machines 10 Compute This 12 Space Robots 14 So You Want to Be an Astronaut 16 Working in Space 18 Mission Control Do You Read Me 20 Brilliant Biologists 22 An Odd Job 24 An Exciting Future 26 Homemade Telescope 28 Glossary 30 Read More 31 Learn More Online 31 Index 32 About the Author 32
Help Wanted Outer space is pretty amazing right There are planets moons and trillions of stars Who knows what else might be out there Maybe someday it’ll be your job to find out From astronauts to robotics engineers lots of people are working in many different jobs to help us learn more about our solar system and the rest of the universe Let’s look at some of the coolest space jobs Aerospace engineers build machines that travel into space IT’S A BIG JOB BUT SOMEONE’S GOTTA DO IT It takes a lot of people to launch a spacecraft and keep it running Many of them do their jobs from Earth GOING TO SPACE STARTS RIGHT HERE ON THE GROUND WOW YOU’RE SO DOWN-TO-EARTH 4
Before astronauts travel to space they scuba dive on Earth as part of their training WAIT DOES THIS MEAN I HAVE TO GET MY SPACESUIT WET Astronomers use powerful telescopes to discover stars planets and more Robotics engineers have designed vehicles that drive around on Mars and send information about the planet back to Earth Robotics engineers also make it possible to control unmanned spacecraft billions of miles from Earth YES MA’AM NOW MOVE TO THE LEFT 5
