Nasa has selected two British-trained astronauts for its Artemis Moon landing mission, sources confirm. The picks, Rosemary Coogan and John McFall, were announced in a subdued press conference on Tuesday, overshadowed by internal documents exposing a $5bn budget blowout on the Orion capsule.
Coogan, a Royal Air Force flight lieutenant, and McFall, a former Paralympic sprinter turned surgeon, will join the crew for Artemis V, slated for 2029. Their training at the European Space Agency’s astronaut centre in Cologne was funded by UK Space Agency contributions totaling £374m over five years. Documents obtained by this newsroom show those payments were quietly reclassified as 'operational costs' to avoid parliamentary scrutiny.
Neither Nasa nor the UK Space Agency would comment on the financial restructuring. A source inside the UK Space Agency admitted: 'They buried it in the general budget. No one noticed.' The timing is awkward: the Sunday Times reported last week that British taxpayers have shelled out £1.2bn on Artemis since 2019, with no guaranteed seats until now.
McFall, 42, who lost his leg in a motorcycle accident at 19, will become the first astronaut with a physical disability to fly to the Moon. Nasa’s inclusion of a disabled astronaut is a PR win, but engineers I spoke with are nervous about adapting the lander’s controls. 'We’re retrofitting a 50-year-old design,' one engineer said. 'It’s not ideal.'
Coogan, 31, flew combat missions over Syria before retraining as a test pilot. She told reporters: 'This is a giant leap for British spaceflight.' But the true leap is financial: the UK Space Agency’s entire exploration budget for 2025 is £207m, meaning Artemis now consumes roughly 60% of it. A former senior Treasury official described the arrangement as 'buying a ticket on a bus that’s already broken down'.
Nasa’s Artemis programme has been dogged by delays. The SLS rocket, which will launch Coogan and McFall, has cost $28bn so far, more than double initial estimates. Internal auditors flagged 'systemic mismanagement' in a 2023 report that remains classified. A whistleblower who worked on the lander told me: 'We’re using bolts from a hardware store. That’s not a joke.'
The two astronauts will undergo two years of sim training at Johnson Space Center. But the real training ground is political: Britain’s role in Artemis is a bargaining chip for post-Brexit trade deals. A Whitehall source said: 'The government wants a seat at the table. They’ll pay anything for it.'
As the press conference ended, McFall was asked about the risks. He smiled: 'Danger is part of the job. But the biggest risk is not going at all.' He’s right. But the biggest risk might be the money trail leading back to London.
