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Aerospace Engineering

What Does An Aerospace Engineer Do?

 

In an aerospace engineering career, you might work on a new spacecraft tasked with bringing crew to the International Space Station. Or, you might be involved in developing a new generation of space telescopes, the source of some of our most significant cosmological discoveries.

But outer space is just one of many realms to explore as an aerospace engineer. You might develop commercial airliners, military jets, or helicopters for our airways. And getting even more down-to-earth, you could design the latest ground and sea transportation, including high-speed trains, racing cars, or deep-sea vessels that explore life at the bottom of the ocean.

Meet Change Makers In Aerospace Engineering!

Meet Margaret Dominguez

Margaret Dominguez is an optical engineer at NASA who helped build the Roman Space Telescope that was just launched into space and will travel 1 million miles from Earth to study the expanding universe.

Meet Margaret and Stephanie

Margaret Dominguez, Optical Engineer at NASA, and Stephanie Hernandez, Systems Engineer at Northrop Grumman, both work on the James Webb Space Telescope.

Meet Dr. Terry Anderson

Dr. Anderson is a systems engineer who writes specifications for computers used on aircraft systems at Northrop Grumman.

Meet Joan Higginbotham

Joan Higginbotham is an electrical engineer and rocket scientist at Collins Aerospace and a former astronaut whose job took her out of this world.

Meet Izabel Marquez

Izabel is a systems engineer who works on complex aircraft systems at Northrop Grumman.

Meet Cathy Koerner

Cathy is a NASA leader who is guiding the development of systems that will land the first woman on the Moon and send humans to Mars.

Meet Emily Muggleton

Emily is an engineer at Collins Aerospace who designs space suits for astronauts on the International Space Station.

Aerospace Engineering Career Overview1

$134,830

Median salary

71,600

Number of jobs in 2024

6%

Expected job growth in next 10 years

Aerospace Engineering Jobs and Education

 

Bachelor’s Degree

  • Build a more spacious airliner.
  • Create satellites that detect drought around the world.
  • Design robots that collect samples on other planets, revealing insights about our galaxy.
  • Develop parachutes, using new materials to improve their performance.
  • Design and develop new Earthbound vehicles like deep-diving vessels for oceanographic research or high-speed rail. systems for safe and energy-efficient transportation.

Associate Degree

  • Maintain, repair and inspect aircraft to ensure passenger safety.
  • Oversee the assembly, installation, and other manufacturing operations in the creation of airplanes, satellites, and other produced products.
  • Test avionics equipment using specialized equipment to ensure that products meet quality specifications.

In their lifetimes, aspiring aerospace professionals are likely to see space colonization, space-based solar power stations, an active search for extraterrestrial life, and the ability to travel to any point on Earth in a matter of hours.

Real World Aerospace Engineering Projects

James Webb Telescope

Webb will be the largest, most powerful and complex space telescope ever built and launched into space. With it we may be able to answer the age old questions of “How did we get here? Are we alone in the universe? How does the universe work?”

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