Northern Ireland born astrophysicist Rosemary Coogan has been named as one of just five new European Space Agency career astronauts selected from a field of 22,500 applicants.

The new class of 17 astronaut candidates, who will work on missions to the International Space Station and beyond, includes 5 career astronauts, 11 members for the astronaut reserve and 1 astronaut with a physical disability. They will all start a 12-month basic training at ESA’s European Astronaut Centre in spring 2023.

ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher introduced the members of the 2022 ESA astronaut class, the first new recruits in 13 years, at the Grand Palais Éphémère in Paris, France on the 23rd November 2022.

Rosemary Coogan was born in 1991 in Northern Ireland, UK. She holds two master’s degrees from the University of Durham, completing her undergraduate master’s degree of Physics in 2013 (focused on physics, mathematics, computer programming and astronomy) and her master’s degree in Astronomy in 2015, where she conducted research on gamma-ray emission from black holes.

In 2019, Rosemary graduated with a doctorate in astronomy from the University of Sussex. During that time, she spent a year as a visiting scientist in Paris, two weeks as a visiting astronomer at a Hawaiian observatory and travelled to present her findings at several international conferences.

She then started a postdoctoral research fellowship in astrophysics at the Max Planck Institute for Extra-terrestrial physics in Munich, Germany, to study the evolution of galaxies with astronomical data from space- and ground-based telescopes.

After completing this postdoctoral work in 2022, Rosemary joined French space agency CNES in Paris, France, as a research fellow in space science, where she worked on upcoming ESA/CNES missions such as EUCLID or the analysis of James Webb Space Telescope observations.

Rosemary holds awards for telescope observation time at international observatories ALMA and NOEMA and for her PhD thesis from the University of Sussex Astronomy Centre.

We look forward to seeing her progress.