Christina Koch holds two spaceflight records. She set the record for the longest single continuous spaceflight by a woman, spending 328 days aboard the International Space Station before returning on the 6th of February 2020, surpassing Peggy Whitson's previous record of 289 days. On the Artemis II mission in April 2026, she became part of the crew that set the record for the greatest human distance from Earth, traveling 6,400 miles beyond the Moon's far side.
Who was the first woman to fly around the Moon?
Christina Koch is the first woman to fly around the Moon and the first woman to travel beyond low Earth orbit. She accomplished this on the Artemis II mission, which flew by the Moon on the 6th of April 2026, and returned to Earth on the 10th of April 2026.
Who was part of the first all-female spacewalk with Christina Koch?
Christina Koch conducted the first all-female spacewalk with Jessica Meir on the 18th of October 2019. The pair worked on upgrades to the International Space Station's power systems and physics observatories, and later completed two additional all-female spacewalks in January 2020.
Where did Christina Koch grow up and go to school?
Christina Koch was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan on the 29th of January 1979, and moved to Jacksonville, North Carolina in 1982. She graduated from the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in Durham in 1997, then earned bachelor's degrees in electrical engineering and physics and a master's degree in electrical engineering from North Carolina State University in Raleigh in 2001 and 2002 respectively.
What did Christina Koch do before becoming a NASA astronaut?
Before joining NASA's astronaut corps, Koch worked as an electrical engineer at the Goddard Space Flight Center and Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, spending three and a half years doing fieldwork in the Arctic and Antarctic regions including a winter-over season at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. She later served as station chief for NOAA's American Samoa Observatory. NASA selected her as an astronaut in June 2013.
What is the Artemis II mission and when did it launch?
Artemis II is a NASA lunar flyby mission that launched on the 1st of April 2026. The crew included Koch, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. The mission flew 6,400 miles beyond the Moon's far side on the 6th of April 2026, setting a record for human distance from Earth, then returned to Earth on the 10th of April 2026.