What should I study in college in order to work in space related fields?

TLDR: What should I study in college/what extracurricular activities should I participate in to work for space agencies in the physics, astrophysics, or engineering fields, assuming no previous knowledge in robotics (mainly concerns to engineering)? How should I start my studies towards these fields?

First thing’s first I’m sure this gets posted and asked daily, so sorry, but I’m very interested in working in space related fields and want to make the best decisions possible to assure i can do that

Right now I’m in grade 11 and trying to decide what my future path should look like in order to get the best chances to work in a field I adore

I don’t necessarily have to work for NASA (although that’s pretty much what i want to do) however I am highly interested in being:

-a physicist

-an astrophysicist

-an aerospace engineer

-a mechanical engineer

-a computer scientist

-an astronaut (reach but it’d be amazing and i’d absolutely love it)

these are the main fields I’m planning on studying in and I am trying to narrow it down and focus on what I enjoy doing the most

given my main interests are in programming, physics, and engineering I gathered all those majors/jobs which would fit perfectly with the above

given that, what I’d prefer to work in would be anything space related really. Working on satelites, rovers, engines, rockets, planes, ai, astrology, or pure astrophysics would all be very interesting jobs which I feel i could excel in and enjoy at the same time

I do have some things holding me back, like my lack of experience in robotics, mainly concerning to physical and engineering work.

Otherwise, I’m very proficient in math and physics related work and have done programming in various languages and can easily adapt and learn these.

So my main questions apart from the title and tldr are the following

1. If my end goal was working on rovers, satellites and such, and i lack the experience and knowledge in robotics, is it too late? Could I learn enough to eventually get a position in a space agency and actually make positive change through these fields? How would I go about learning this information and taking strides towards working in these fields? Also, what would be the best major to study in to achieve these jobs? Mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering, physics, computer science?

2. If I wanted to work in the computer science field and program for space agencies, what would be my best course of action? Continue the study of programming in various programming languages or just center into one specific language?

3. How viable is a physics/astrophysics major in order to work for NASA? How needed is this at NASA right now?

if anyone has answers to some of these questions i’d greatly appreciate it

also sorry if i rambled but i’m very interested in this field of work and just put all my thoughts on here

Submitted October 16, 2018 at 10:14PM by hipipop https://ift.tt/2QPovP6