From BBC
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BBC News science team
Reporting fromHouston, Texas
Alison Francis
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Rosemary Coogan is surrounded by a team of people pushing, pulling, squishing and squeezing her into a spacesuit.
It takes about 45 minutes to get all her gear on before a helmet is carefully lowered over her head.
The British astronaut is about to undergo her toughest challenge yet – assessing whether she is ready for a spacewalk. The test will take place in one of the largest pools in the world: Nasa’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
The pool – which is 12m deep (40ft) – contains a life-sized replica of the International Space Station (ISS), and a “spacewalk” here is as close as it gets to mimicking weightlessness on Earth.
“It’s a big day,” Rosemary says before the dive, which is going to last more than six hours. “It’s very physically intense – and it’s very psychologically intense.”
But Rosemary doesn’t seem too fazed. She smiles and waves as the platform she’s standing on is slowly lowered into the water.
Being an astronaut was Dr Rosemary Coogan’s dream from a young age, she says. But it was a dream that seemed out of reach.
“At the careers day at school, you don’t tend to meet astronauts,” Rosemary says. “You don’t get to meet people who’ve done it, you don’t really get to hear their stories.”
So she decided to study the stars instead, opting for a career in astrophysics. But when the European Space