If you go to a school whose physics department is helping NASA with something, and you have a job there, you can work on NASA robots. I knew a guy who worked on the Mars rover when he was 19 or 20.
He was super-smart, but that probably goes without saying.
As silly as it sounds, I don't remember his name. He was a friend-of-a-friend, I think he only mentioned it to me because I had NASA patches all over my backpack. If you're really interested I can ask around.
