What does your average space scientist do in an average day?

What does your average space scientist do in an average day?

Colin Pillinger (Professor of Planetary Sciences) gives expert video advice on: Is it your life ambition to find life on other planets?; Who inspired you to search for extraterrestrial life? and more...

A lot of space scientist work isn't as exciting as you imagine. Space scientists are just ordinary people, we just try to address problems of engineering science. When it comes to making spacecraft, it requires real teamwork, and there is a lot of going over things, because it's such high risk. We need to test whether it survives the rigorous of going on a space mission. You have to prove that this is going to survive before you fly, because the last thing you want is to fly something that doesn't work. Space scientists do our damnedest to make sure spacecraft work; we test everything on. What we can't test - and the only way we can truly test a spacecraft - is by going on there and doing it. You can't simulate some of these things. For example, when you're bouncing around in the gasbags, you can simulate the first one because you know exactly how it orients, but after that the number of ways of which it's oriented is infinite. You could spend your life as a space scientist testing it, and still not get anywhere, so all you can do is calculate what the probability is.