Sending people to space and keeping them alive and healthy there: the astronauts themselves plus the doctors, suit makers, trainers, and life-support engineers behind them.
Top pay: highest pay, longest training
Astronaut: Flies to space to live on space stations, run experiments, do spacewalks, and soon, walk on the Moon. Typical pay $155k.
Commercial Astronaut / Spacecraft Pilot: Flies or crews private spacecraft for companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, and Axiom. Typical pay $175k.
Research Payload Specialist: A scientist who flies to space (or on suborbital rockets) to run their own experiments. Typical pay $125k.
Spacesuit Engineer: Designs spacesuits, which are really tiny personal spacecraft with life support, cooling, and radios. Typical pay $125k.
Life Support (ECLSS) Engineer: Designs the systems that make air, recycle water (including urine), and remove carbon dioxide on spacecraft. Typical pay $125k.
Space Architect: Designs places for people to live in space and on the Moon and Mars, from inflatable stations to lunar bases. Typical pay $115k.
Space Radiation Health Officer: Protects astronauts from space radiation by tracking solar storms and measuring dose. Typical pay $125k.
Space Physiologist: Studies how microgravity and radiation change the human body, and how to protect astronauts. Typical pay $120k.
Mid pay: solid pay, degree or apprenticeship
Space Psychologist: Helps astronauts stay mentally healthy through isolation, stress, and long missions far from home. Typical pay $100k.
Space Food Scientist: Creates food that is safe, tasty, and lasts years for astronauts in space. Typical pay $82k.
Astronaut Training Instructor: Teaches astronauts how to operate spacecraft systems, do spacewalks, and handle emergencies. Typical pay $95k.
Neutral Buoyancy Lab Diver: Helps astronauts train for spacewalks in a giant swimming pool containing a full-size space station. Typical pay $68k.
Spacesuit Technician: Maintains, fits, and repairs spacesuits and keeps them ready for training and flight. Typical pay $72k.
Crew Recovery Team Member: Rushes to the capsule after splashdown to secure it and safely get astronauts out. Typical pay $70k.
Human Centrifuge Operator: Spins pilots and future space tourists in giant centrifuges to train their bodies for crushing G-forces. Typical pay $65k.
Starter: fastest way in
Spacesuit Softgoods Technician: Sews the many fabric layers of spacesuits and space hardware like thermal blankets and parachutes. Typical pay $44k.
Spaceflight Research Volunteer: Gets paid to live in a habitat simulator or lie tilted in bed for weeks so scientists can study what spaceflight does to bodies. Typical pay $20k.
Altitude Chamber Technician: Runs chambers that pump out air to simulate high altitude, teaching pilots and astronauts what lack of oxygen feels like. Typical pay $54k.
Career Universe is an early version. Pay, training and AI-risk figures are estimates to start your own research, not verified facts. The research was written with AI research assistants, checked by validation scripts and spot-checked by hand. Check anything important with schools, employers and official sources. How the numbers work.