Dr Farah Alibay is a NASA spacecraft engineer, currently working on the InSight mission aiming to land on Mars this November.

In an article about a day in the life of her job, she answers the question, What’s your favourite aspect of your job?

“No matter what I do on a given day, no one’s really done it before. And I think that’s what’s exciting. We don’t just do incremental change, we do brand new things. It helps put things in perspective, because my job does involve spending days looking at spreadsheets sometimes, or building PowerPoint slides, or answering emails. I definitely do a lot of that, so it’s just as boring sometimes as other jobs.”

Wow. Never in a million light years had I ever imagined that I’d be able to equate my own role to that of a rocket scientist!

Dr Alibay concludes:

“But putting it into perspective… even on a boring day my spacecraft is still on its way to Mars!”

OK. Got me there. Dr Alibay, you win.