Space travel should not be just ‘for the elites’, says new British astronaut

She beat a field of more than 22,000 candidates and has a PhD in astrophysics and a background as a Royal Navy reserve, but the newly qualified British astronaut Rosemary Coogan believes that in future space travel should not be restricted to elites.

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 lead not only to the return of humans to the moon but also journeys to Mars and beyond.

“I certainly don’t think space travel, or space generally, should be for the elites,” she said. “I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who would love to [visit] another planet. I think the people who will end up doing these missions will be trained to make sure that it’s a successful mission and that we’re treating other planets with respect, but that’s not the same as saying they’ll be the few elites.”

Coogan, who graduated from training in April, will be deployed for a six-month mission to the International Space Station between now and 2030, when the ISS is due to be decommissioned. Beyond that, a new era of ambition for space travel is unfolding, with Nasa’s Artemis programme aiming for a crewed landing on the moon as early as 2026 in preparation for an envisioned first human visit to Mars. Three seats have been assigned to European astronauts on future Artemis missions and Coogan says she stands ready to be deployed.

“I’d 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 contribute to those things as much as possible.”

She does not, however, share the vision of Elon Musk, whose SpaceX rockets regularly carry astronauts to the ISS and who recently asserted that humans could be living on Mars in a self-sustaining city within 20 years.

“It’s a personal opinion, but I don’t envisage 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 the Earth’s place in the vast universe, how life first emerged here, and help predict future changes to our climate to “plan for the things that unfortunately it is becoming too late to change”.

“We have a fantastic, amazing, beautiful planet here,” she said. “What we learn from the moon and from Mars we can bring back to this planet. We need to look after planet Earth and I think going to other planets will actually help us do that, but I look at it from kind of that way around.”

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 Centre in Cologne, Germany. She has a PhD in astrophysics, studying galaxy evolution with the James Webb Space Telescope, and earlier spent years with the Sea Cadets and the Royal Navy Reserve. Her selection 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 former fighter pilots. Esa’s 2009 cohort of seven astronauts included just one woman, compared with two out of five career astronauts in 2022 and a reserve cohort that includes the British Paralympic sprinter and surgeon John McFall. Coogan said: “The search for diversity and complete parity is always something we need to go further and further towards.”

Training involves a fast-track academic curriculum of maths, biology, engineering, photography and public communication. But psychological preparation is also a major focus. Coogan and her fellow trainees spent days in isolation living in a cave and were sent on 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 safely there, but also how to look after each other.”

At one point, Coogan’s foot plunged through the snow into an icy river beneath. “I got an extremely wet and cold foot, but didn’t think that 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 perhaps a bit of a low point,” Coogan said. “But one of my colleagues came over and brought me a cup of tea. It was a really 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 about a five-year air leak that has proved difficult to locate, water spraying unexpectedly from an astronaut’s spacesuit, and two US astronauts’ planned eight-day visit in June turning into eight months stranded in space due to technical issues with the Boeing Starliner. But Coogan is not fazed, saying that dealing with “non-nominal” events and uncertainty is part of the job description.

“[Esa] select people to be particularly calm under pressure, to not panic in extraordinary situations,” she said. “It’s an amazing opportunity to go to the station, and it’s not for us to choose exactly when or for exactly how long. We kind of embrace taking on the situation as it comes.”