She beat a field of more than 22,000 candidates and has a PhD in astrophysics and a background as a Royal Navy reservist, but newly qualified British astronaut Rosemary Coogan believes space travel in the future should not be limited to the elite does not become
Coogan, 33, from Belfast, who is the European Space Agency’s (Esa) second British recruit, believes we are entering a revolutionary period of space exploration that will not only lead to the return of humans to the moon, but also voyages to Mars and beyond.
“I certainly don’t think space travel, or space in general, should be for the elite,” she said. “I’m sure there are a lot of people out there who like it [visit] another planet. I think the people who will end up doing these missions will be trained to make sure it’s a successful mission and that we treat other planets with respect, but that’s not the same as saying they’ll be the elite few .”
Coogan, who graduated from training in Aprilwill be deployed for a six-month mission to the International Space Station between now and 2030, when the ISS will be decommissioned. Furthermore, a new era of ambition for space travel is unfolding, with Nasa’s Artemis program aiming to create a crew landing on the moon as early as 2026 in preparation for an intended first human visit to Mars. Three seats have been allocated to European astronauts on future Artemis missions and Coogan says she is ready to be deployed.
“I would love to go to the moon … I would be incredibly excited to visit other planets,” she said. “Every astronaut’s goal is to be involved in exploration or to contribute as much as possible to those things.”
However, she does not share the vision of Elon Muskwhose SpaceX rockets regularly transport astronauts to the ISS and who recently claimed that humans could live in a self-sustaining city on Mars within 20 years.
“It’s a personal opinion, but I don’t foresee a future where we have permanent colonies,” she said. “I don’t think we need to leave Earth behind and go elsewhere permanently.”
Instead, she said, visiting other plants will deepen our understanding of Earth’s place in the vast universe, how life first arose here, and help predict future changes to our climate to “ to plan for the things that unfortunately become too late to change”.
“We have a fantastic, wonderful, beautiful planet here,” she said. “What we learn from the moon and from Mars, we can bring back to this planet. We have to take care of planet Earth and I think going to other planets will actually help us do that, but I kind of look at it from that side.”
Coogan was selected as an Esa candidate from a pool of more than 22,500 applicants in 2022 and spent a year training at the European Astronaut Center in Cologne, Germany. She has a PhD in astrophysics, studying galaxy evolution with the James Webb Space Telescopeand spent earlier years with the Sea Cadets and the Royal Navy Reserve. Her choice follows that of Maj Tim Peake, Britain’s first Esa astronaut, and Helen Sharman, who visited the Soviet Mir space station in 1991.
Diversity is improving in what was once the preserve of male ex-fighter pilots. Esa’s 2009 cohort of seven astronauts included just one woman, compared to two out of five career astronauts in 2022 and a reserve cohort that includes British Paralympic sprinter and surgeon John McFall. Coogan said: “The quest for diversity and full equality is always something we need to go further and further.”
Training involves a fast-paced academic curriculum of mathematics, biology, engineering, photography and public communication. But psychological preparation is also a big focus. Coogan and her fellow students spent days in isolation in a cave and were sent for high-altitude winter survival training in the Spanish Pyrenees.
“It was an absolutely incredible landscape, snow everywhere,” she said. “There was a real emphasis on understanding what’s around you, how to make sure you survive there safely, but also how to look after each other.”
At one point, Coogan’s foot plunged through the snow into an icy river below. “I got an extremely wet and cold foot but didn’t think too much of it,” she said. But she woke up the next morning to find her boot frozen solid and impossible to put back on. “It was maybe a bit of a low point,” Coogan said. “But one of my colleagues came and brought me a cup of tea. It was a very nice moment of the team supporting each other.”
As it enters its twilight years, the ISS has been hit by a series of woes, with concerns over a five-year air leak that were hard to track, water unexpectedly gushing from an astronaut’s spacesuit, and two US astronauts’ planned eight-day visit in June that turned into eight months stranded in space due to technical problems with the Boeing Starliner. But Coogan isn’t surprised, saying dealing with “non-nominal” events and uncertainty is part of the job description.
“[Esa] choose people to be especially calm under pressure, not to panic in extraordinary situations,” she said. “It’s a great opportunity to go to the station, and it’s not for us to choose exactly when or exactly how long. We embrace the situation as it comes.”
