Ever since she was a little girl, Eryn Andrews has been dreaming of a career in space exploration where she could reach for the stars.
But the 41-year-old Houston made a name for herself when her side hustle unexpectedly took off in a meteoric rise.
Andrews has been working as a full-time professional at NASA's Johnson Space Center since 2008, helping astronauts safely and efficiently work in space.
As a 'human performance engineer,' she works at a 'lunar sandbox' testing facility where she analyzes data to guide the way astronauts move around in their spacesuits.
Her salary is around the 'mid-$100,000' range, but she told the Daily Mail that what really makes the job 'incredibly fulfilling' is living her life-long dream.
'Working in all these different programs, seeing how it works, and then knowing I've left my mark is so, so, so cool,' she told us.
When she's not testing spacesuits, Andrews works up to eight hours a week on her side hustle: Recording voiceovers for clients like Coca-Cola, Bank of America, Dairy Queen and the University of Mississippi.
She earns hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process.
Eryn Andrews currently works for NASA as a 'human performance engineer,' earning a 'mid-$100,000' salary in the process
Eryn Andrews has been working at NASA since 2008, switching teams a few times before landing on her current role as a human performance engineer
Over the years, Andrews has worked on several NASA programs, including the space shuttle program and the International Space Station.
In her current role as a human performance engineer, she prepares astronauts for future missions to the moon.
Her team conducts experiments to understand how people can move around while wearing spacesuits, including testing how quickly astronauts can complete tasks, how much strain their bodies can withstand and what tools or equipment might make difficult movements easier in the bulky suits.
According to Glassdoor, the estimated average salary for an engineer at NASA is around $125,000 a year, but some reported earning well beyond $300,000.
Meanwhile, a typical full-time worker in the US earns a salary of about $64,220 per year based on data from early 2026 from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But most NASA employees are required to work in high cost of living areas, which means that hearty six-figure salary isn't really worth as much.
So in spring 2022, Andrews was looking for a new hobby that could also bring in a little extra money. With unpredictable hours at NASA, she needed something she could do from home and squeeze into her already-busy schedule.
So, she Googled 'single mom side hustles' and, after mulling over starting an Etsy or working as a secret shopper, she landed on voiceover work.
Eryn Andrews' first microphone purchased for voiceover work was $50 off of Amazon - and she used a cut up foam mattress topper to help muffle the sound
A friend who was doing full-time voiceover work helped get started in 2022. Andrews says she spent about $200 on an introductory voiceover class, bought a $50 microphone from Amazon and started taking small jobs on Fiverr.
Her first month brought in about $1,000 - five times more than the $200 a month she had originally hoped to make.
By summer 2025, her voiceover earnings hit $32,400 per month or around $300,000 a year - almost triple her NASA annual salary.
'It was a little bit like wildfire,' she said. 'All of a sudden, tons of doors and options were opening up to me - I never anticipated it taking it off like this,' she told us.
Andrews regularly accepts one-off jobs for commercials, corporate training, social media, e-learning, voicemail systems and character performances - the only category she'll actively avoid is audiobooks, because they can take 38 to 40 hours to record and edit.
Because Andrews is also a single mom, she says having a secondary income stream gives her the kind of financial security that she wasn't getting from her NASA salary alone.
Both industries can be volatile, she said, and she's been laid off in the past. Now, if one income stream disappears, the other can still cover the bills for her and her 10-year-old daughter.
The extra support has also allowed her to be more selective about the voiceover work she takes on, and invest in coaching and better equipment.
She thinks fondly of working on The Obsessive Shadow, a horror video game set in the 1980s.
Eryn Andrews' previous voiceover jobs include recordings for Hilton, NASA, Petsmart, Bank of America and even the video game the Obsessive Shadow
In the game, players control Liam, a nine-year-old boy left home alone during a power outage, who relies on a flashlight and phone instructions from his missing mother to survive a 'Slender Man-like' entity.
Andrews played the narrator/missing mother.
'It was one of the first character performances I've got to do as a voice actor and then I submitted it for award consideration and ultimately ended up winning,' Andrews said.
'And that was so cool,' she added. 'I got to go on stage wearing a fancy dress and do an acceptance speech that I was totally not prepared to do.'
She laughed thinking about the moment when she was recording the nominees being announced, only for her to fling the phone aside when she realized she won.
'I was shocked to be nominated,' she said. 'I just want to make a couple 100 bucks a month, too. And now I'm an award-winning voice actor.'
As she got more successful doing voiceovers, Andrews realized the side hustle was way more than just a way to make money. The more unique and exciting gigs she landed, the more she found herself drawn to the creative side of the work.
'I started to discover this secondary passion now,' she said of her side hustle, 'this creative itch that perhaps I've suppressed my whole life because I've been so focused on the math and the science and being an engineer, that I never took time to work on the artistic side of me that needed to create and be expressive.'
Eryn Andrews attended the Voice Arts Awards and can now call herself an award-winning voiceover actor
Despite working two jobs, Andrews still makes time to spend with her 10-year-old daughter.
They've been on a Crocodile Hunter kick recently, watching old videos of Steve Irwin pursue his passion as a conservationist.
The 10-year-old loves animals, too, so when Andrews asked what she wants to be when she grows up, she was surprised when her daughter firmly replied 'a famous person.'
When Andrews asked why does she want to be famous, her daughter said she wants to inspire other people to do good things. Just like Steve Irwin.
'That is such, like, a wonderful Miss America kind of answer,' Andrews said with a laugh.
But for her, following your passion is always the most important thing, whether that's at NASA or as a voice actor. When asked about her biggest piece of advice, Andrews said to 'just get started.'
'Don't convince yourself you have to have all these, you know, glorious credentials, all these amazing things you have to have done in order to start,' she said.
'No, you just start and then you do amazing things with it.'
