Northern Irish astrophysicist
Rosemary Theresa Coogan (born 1991) is an astrophysicist and UK astronaut from Northern Ireland. Her research considers galaxy evolution and space-based telescopes. She is part of ESA's European Astronaut Corps.
Early life and education
Coogan attended Brighton & Hove High School, now Brighton Girls.[citation needed] She was involved with military training from a young age.[1] She was trained as a petty officer with the Sea Cadets. In 2009 she joined HMS Calliope and HMS Example, where she was made an Officer cadet.[1] She was later promoted to Midshipman of the Royal Naval Reserve.[2]
Coogan studied for her undergraduate degree in Physics at Durham University (University College), graduating in 2013.[2] She remained in Durham for her master's research, where she studied gamma-ray astronomy with Paula Chadwick.[3][4] Her research involved observations using the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope to study the 0.1 < Eγ < 300 GeV gamma-ray emission of radio quasars. Coogan also worked on data science during a work placement at Senseye.[5] She worked as a simulation support engineer to develop machine learning models to detect anomalies from robotic sensors.
Coogan moved to the University of Sussex as a doctoral researcher, studying galaxy evolution and the activity of active galactic nuclei.[6] She found that dense cluster environment increases the star formation efficiency, which she attributed to the high number of mergers, interactions and the active galactic nuclei.[6] Toward the end of her doctorate, she attempted to inform future observations by constructing mock images of survey fields for the Square Kilometre Array.[6]
Career
Coogan moved to the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics.[1][7] In Germany, Coogan studied galaxy evolution with space-based telescopes. In 2022, Coogan was appointed to the CNES, where she works on Euclid and James Webb Space Telescope.[1]
In 2022, Coogan was selected by the European Astronaut Corps to join the 2022 European Space Agency Astronaut Group.[1][8] She said that she applied to the space programme because she wanted to get "hands-on" with contributing the most that we can from space.[1] Coogan completed ESA's Basic Training curriculum at the European Astronaut Centre, and graduated on the 22nd of April 2024 alongside her classmates from "The Hoppers"[9] group.[10]
Selected publications
References