He Builds Space Robots for a Living | Best Job Ever

Everything you see on a spacecraft is usually designed and built by a mechanical engineer, and I get to do that. My fundamental job is to design and build hardware that goes out and explores our universe. I build things that have gone to the surface of Mars, build things that look back at Earth, things that have gone under the ocean, built things that have gone into deep space.

You get to call your family and say, "You know that thing that just went up there in space and is now on its way to Mars? Well, yeah, I built that!"

Main engine start, zero, and lift-off of the Atlas V with Curiosity, seeking clues to the planetary puzzle about life on Mars. It's an amazing feeling to have hardware that you've touched and you've played with, and you got to manipulate in some way on the surface of another planet. Touchdown confirmed.

So, do I have a favorite rover? I mean, it's hard not to love the first child, and so our first child is really the Sojourner rover, which really started our exploration of Mars with robotic vehicles.

If you don't have that first thing, you know, if it wasn't Kennedy saying that we're going to go to the Moon, not because it's easy, but because it's hard, "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other thing, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

It's the same type of thing: we're not going to go do roving exploration on the surface of Mars because it's easy, but we know it's hard.

People that would say, "Hey, look, we're doing all this exploration in space. Why aren't we doing a lot more exploration of Earth?" I actually agree fundamentally with you. I think exploration is the thing that we should talk about, not if we're exploring Earth or Mars or Venus or Jupiter or Saturn or whatever it is.

I think it's exploration—it's asking the questions that need answers, and it's that striving for intellectual knowledge and growth. It's just amazing to think about what's out there.

Anywhere on Earth that we find liquid water, we find life. If there were also methane around, the microbes here on Earth could have survived on Mars.