The saying, “you’ve got your head in the clouds” couldn’t be more true for one recent Greene County High School graduate, who is looking beyond the proverbial clouds. 

Alex Roberts is a 2021 Greene County High School graduate who is attending Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida. He will be double majoring in space flight operations and space physics. He talks about his future career in those fields.

“I would either want to be an astronaut with these degrees, going to astronaut training program and be the one up in space walking on the moon, or Mars, or building rocket ships and stuff like that. Or I would want to be somebody that worked on the ground at Mission Control in a lot safer office chair.”

Roberts says he grew up really enjoying math and science, but he made his decision to pursue a career in space following his high school freshman year when he took physical science and in particular life science.

“We kind of learned about the world today and I kind of learned about how this planet (Earth) isn’t necessarily going to last the longest, and going to last forever. So what really drove me into wanting to look into space was I want to be a part of that plan B and part of being able to find that next planet for us to possibly inhabit one day. I think that’s probably the coolest part of space travel.”

Roberts adds he is able to begin his major college track this fall semester due to completing 45 college credits while in high school.