Hi Debra,
If I had to do my education and training all over again, I probably would have majored in aerospace engineering or electrical engineering in college, and then moved on to studying the space sciences in graduate school. I really like being a scientist and studying the Earth's magnetosphere, but I wish that I could be more involved in designing the spacecraft and instruments that scientists use to study the solar system. Even though I have been doing research in magnetospheric physics for more than 10 years now, I have only had the opportunity to work with the actual instruments flown on board rockets and satelllites in the last few months. I've been testing a radio wave receiver just like the one on board the Cluster satellite in the laboratory to see how it responds to certain signals. I'm also helping get particle detectors ready for a sounding rocket launch by testing them in a vacuum chamber. Testing space hardware is a lot of fun, but I wish I understood a lot more about how everything works. I think that maybe I would be able to do more work with space hardware if I had taken more engineering courses in school.
Kris