EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT
BECOMING A SPACE MISSION SPECIALIST
Are your students dreaming of taking part in the flight of spacecraft into and through outer space? Are they interested in design or knowing how to build aircraft or even spacecraft? Then they need to get acquainted with Space Mission Specialist’s career! Describing someone as Space Mission Specialist could mean many different things, but we will focus on engineering! In that case, a combination of chemistry, physics and maths is essential! Space mission specialists work in industries that design or build aircraft, missiles, systems for national defence, or spacecraft. Are your students wondering how to be one of them? Scroll down to get more information.
SKILLS
Find out about the key skills to become a Space Mission Specialist.
Programming
A space mission specialist needs to know how to build something from scratch, as well as integrate changes and updates into existing software. This requires strong coding skills.
Critical Thinking
Using logic and reasoning to identify the strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions or approaches to problems is an essential part of a space mission specialist’s day-to-day work.
Problem Solving
Problem-solving involves the identification of complex problems and reviews related information to develop and evaluate options and implement solutions.
Operation
Monitoring
As a space mission specialist, you will often need to watch gauges, dials, or other indicators to make sure a machine is working properly.
Quality Control
Analysis
Part of a space mission specialist’s work is to conduct tests and inspect products, services, or processes to evaluate their quality or performance.
Systems
Analysis
It is quite common to have to determine how a system should work and how changes in conditions, operations, and the environment affect outcomes.
Meet Dr Mag Selwa
Dr Mag Selwa works as High-Performance Computing consultant at Facilities for Education, Research, Communication and Collaboration, ICTS services of KU Leuven, Belgium. As a PhD student, she studied astrophysics, mainly on solar physics and solar space missions. Later, when she became a postdoctoral researcher, she worked at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre.
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0: all the materials and content presented on this STEM Job profile have been provided by TIWI (Teaching ICT with Inquiry), a project co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.
