British astronaut Rosemary Coogan believes that the space travel should not be restricted to the elites in future, reports the Guardian.
“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,” she added.
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.
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 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.
Bd-Pratidin English/ Afsar Munna
